Developmental Reading

A Review of Developmental Reading 1

What is Reading? READING is a complex process that requires a great deal of active participation on the part of the reader. Huffman (1998) defines reading as “asking questions of printed text and reading with comprehension becomes a matter of getting his questions answered.” Reading is a basic life skill. It is a cornerstone for a child’s success in school and throughout his life.

What is Reading? It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas.

Reading According to Anderson (1998) “The process of constructing meaning from written texts.”

1. Reading is CONSTRUCTIVE: learning to reason about written material using knowledge from everyday life and from disciplined fields of study. 2. Reading is FLUENT: mastery of basic processes to the point where they are automatic so that attention is freed for the analysis of meaning. 3. Reading is STRATEGIC: controlling one’s reading in relation to one’s purpose, the nature of the material and whether one is comprehending.

Reading According to Anderson (1998) 4. Reading is MOTIVATED: able to sustain attention and learning that written material can be interesting and informative. 5. Reading is a LIFELONG PURSUIT: continuous practices, development, and refinement.

Why do students need to have good reading skills? Over time, learning becomes more complex, with heightened demands on the learners to use reading skills to analyse or to solve problems. Good reading skills are required to study geography, do math, use computers, and conduct experiments. Even motivated, hard-working students are severely hampered in their school-work if they cannot read well by the end of third grade.

Ways How Children Define Reading (Harste, 1978) • Filling out workbooks. • Pronouncing the letters • Putting sounds together. • Reading is learning hard words. • Reading is like thinking…it’s understanding the story. • It’s when you find things out.

Reading Concepts 1. Teach the child what each letter stands for and he can read. The goal of reading is constructing meaning in response to text. It requires interactive use of grapho-phonic, syntactic, and semantic cues to construct meaning. 2. Most of the contemporary definitions of reading include the following: reading is a process, reading is strategic, reading is interactive, and reading instruction requires orchestration.

What is the essential skill in reading? The essential skill in reading is getting meaning from a printed or written message. Reading specialists would generally agree that reading skill includes the following components (Cooper, 1986): 1. 2. 3. 4.

Knowledge of the language to be read Ability to separate spoken words into component sounds Ability to recognize and discriminate the letter of the alphabet Understanding of the principle of reading from left-to-right or rightto left

…Cont’d. 5. Understanding of the correspondence between letters and sounds 6. Ability to recognize printed words from a variety of cues such as context, analogy, syntactic, or letter shapes

7. Ability to comprehend a text

Learners as Effective Readers Learners must become effective readers to meet the demands of literacy and learning for the 21st century. Children need and deserve an aggressive approach to ensure their right to read.

Facts About Reading • Children’s literacy development begins long before children start formal instruction in elementary school. • More than 4 in 10 pre-schoolers, 5 in 10 toddlers, and 6 in 10 babies are not read to regularly. • Children benefit from experiences in early childhood that foster language development, cultivate a motivation to read, and establish a link between print and spoken words. Later, students need to develop a clear understanding of the relationship between letters and sounds, and an ability to obtain meaning from what they read.

Facts About Reading • Reading aloud to children helps them develop and improve literacy skills – reading, writing, speaking, and listening. • Reading and writing are a developmental continuum rather than acquired skills. • Children learn to read and write by being read to, reading simple text, and experimenting with writing. • Due to different brain signature, 20-40% of the population does not acquire phonemic awareness. • Certain abilities must be developed that work together to create strong reading skills.

Facts About Reading • Learners become engaged in literacy as they grow more strategic, motivated, knowledgeable, and socially interactive. • Some researchers describe two levels of literacy: emergent and conventional. More traditional researchers define three levels: early reader, transitional reader, and fluent reader. • Reading and writing rely on a specific set of cognitive skills such as attention, memory, symbolic thinking, and self-regulation. • Children’s reading and writing abilities develop together. • All children need to have high-quality children’s books as a part of their daily experience.

Facts About Reading • Teaching with a flexible mix of research-based instructional methods, geared toward individual students, is more effective than strict adherence to any one approach. • A well-organized, comprehensive approach to the teaching of reading that includes systematic teaching or specific reading skills produces better readers. • Teachers need to know and understand the most up-to-date reading research and be able to implement it in their classrooms. • Teachers must be able to identify reading difficulties in the learners early on and arrange appropriate and effective interventions in response. Young learners need continuing encouragement and individualized instruction to succeed in learning to read.

What is Developmental Reading? • A kind of reading in which the materials are scientifically prepared and aimed at developing the reading skills of learners. Vocabulary and sentence structures are controlled and follow a set of criteria for sequencing.

Techniques in Reading Scientific Materials

• SKIMMING a. Preview – the reader needs to find out if the book or the material is written by a specialist in that certain field and must see whether it contains the needed information. b. Overviewing – the reader has to find out the purpose and scope of the material. He must look the sections that are of interest to him. c. Survey – the reader has to get the general idea of the material.

Techniques in Reading Scientific Materials • SCANNING – this technique helps the reader to search quickly for the information he wants. The following are the procedures: a. Focus on the specific information needed. b. Know what clues to find in the information. c. Move your eyes quickly down the page to find the clue. d. Read the section that contains the clues to get the information needed.

Kinds of Reading Skills (Anderson, 1994) • WORD ATTACK SKILLS – let the reader figure out new words.

• COMPREHENSION SKILLS – help the reader predict the next word, phrase, or sentence quickly enough to speed recognition. • FLUENCY SKILLS – help the reader see the larger segments, phrases and groups of words as wholes. • CRITICAL READING SKILLS – help the reader see the relationship of ideas and use these in reading with meaning and fluency.

What is Comprehension? It is the ability to grasp something mentally and the capacity to understand ideas and facts. Comprehensibility in writing is related to comprehension in reading. Comprehension is based on: 1. knowledge that reading makes sense; 2. reader’s prior knowledge; 3. information presented in the text; 4. the use of context to assist recognition of words and meaning

Strategies for Improving Comprehension (Before Reading) • ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE – this strategy helps pupils as they make and confirm predictions. It also helps them make connections between the texts and their lives. Pupils are provided information or given activities to link what they are about to read to something within their realm of knowledge. • UNDERSTAND PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE – this skill helps pupils identify the parts of paragraph, the topic sentence, the details and conclusion. Pupils are provided information or given activities to assist them in using the structure of paragraphs to enhance their comprehension of the material.

Strategies for Improving Comprehension (Before Reading) • UNDERSTAND TEXTBOOK STRUCTURE – understanding the basic structure of a textbook can also be used as an advantage. Most writers of textbooks put each section in for a purpose, to help the reader understand the subject matter most efficiently. By understanding what each part of the textbook is for, it can be easier to study the material. • IMPROVE VOCABULARY – this skill helps pupils become better reader by improving their vocabulary and ability to understand context. Pupils are provided information or given activities to enhance their understanding of vocabulary that is essential for comprehension of the assigned material.

Strategies for Improving Comprehension (Before Reading) • ESTABLISH PURPOSE FOR READING – this strategy improves pupils’ comprehension by focusing reading. Pupils who understand why they are reading and know what they are expected to understand have a much higher comprehension rate than those who read without this knowledge. Learn how to move from having learners “collect knowledge” to having them wondering about the significance of the knowledge. • GENERATE QUESTIONS – this strategy improves inferencing skills and leads pupils to expanded learning activities. Pupils generate a list of questions they would like answered about the topic; teacher generates a list of questions that should be answered as students read.

Strategies for Improving Comprehension (Before Reading) • USE ANTICIPATION GUIDE – this strategy draws upon prior knowledge, improves inferencing skills, and provides motivation for reading. Pupils are given a list of statements pertaining to the “big ideas” that they should understand after reading the text. Pupils indicate whether they agree or disagree with statements.

General Framework for Teaching Reading Comprehension Before Reading

During Reading

After Reading

1. Set objectives for

1. Stop periodically

1. Strategic integ-

instruction.

to ask questions.

ration of comprehen-

2. Identify and pre-

2. Map text structure

sion instruction.

teach difficulty to

elements.

2. Planned review.

read word.

3. Model ongoing

3. Assessment of

3. Prime students’

comprehension moni-

students’ under-

background know-

toring.

standing.

ledge

What is Critical Reading? • Critical reading as a goal includes the ability to evaluate ideas socially or politically. • Critical reading skills are the ability to analyse, evaluate, and synthesize what one reads. They are the ability to see relationships of ideas and use them as an aid in reading. • E.g. SEEING CAUSE AND EFFECT “If you drop it, it will b----”

The Reading Act • THE READING PROCESS Many people have tried to understand and define the reading process. Over the years, theoretical assumptions regarding the reading process have varied greatly. Nevertheless, definitions of reading are generally divided into two major types: 1) those that equate reading with interpretation of experience generally, and 2) those that restrict the definition to the interpretation of graphic symbols.

The Reading Act Understanding the reading process will help in the areas of: a) Material production b) Teaching c) Training teachers The most successful reading instruction is that which is based on a solid understanding of the reading process itself, and which promotes the acquisitions of good reading strategies.

Reading Stages • PLEASURE – this involves a willing suspension of belief as the reader inhabits the created world. • NATURALIZATION – this involves translating the text into situations or persons that seem familiar to the reader. Elements in the text which do not naturalize easily are often ignored or even distorted. • RESPONDING – this refers to sympathizing or hating, accepting or resisting the situation and/or characters. Such response generally begins with “I like…” or “I don’t like…” • RECOGNITION – this is the act of appreciating it being put in words.

Reading Stages • IDENTIFICATION – this refers to the various connection with the characters, events, situations, making them part of the world rather than joining them. • CRITICAL DIALOGUE – to some degree, this refers to re-writing, teasing out a hidden story or implications. • ANALYTICAL-CRITICAL – this involves text analysis, self-analysis, and analysis of literary and cultural repertory of both. • QUESTIONING THE TEXT – looking for oppositions, contradictions in the text as well as challenges of initial oppositions, conflicts.

Reading Stages • YOUR OWN RESPONSE – the changing focus, approach, and identification. • INTRATEXTUAL-DRAMATIC – the relation of the part to the whole, the primary level of understanding. • AUTHORIAL – the relation of text to the author, and the author’s other works. This requires being familiar with the author’s life, works, and recurrent preoccupations. • HISTORICAL – the relation of the text to milieu. How has a text reflected or help to create its culture. • ALLUSIVE – the relation of text to other texts, past and present or intertextuality.

Reading Stages • GENERIC – the relation of text to other texts of similar kind. • PHILOSOPHICAL – the relationship of the text to the world of ideas. It may include how the world can be mapped onto specific religious or ideologies – Christianity, Marxism, Freudian, of Jungian psychology, Feminism). • SUBJECTIVE – the relationship of the text to the reader’s experience.