Subjects Matter-How Smart Readers Think

The second chapter began with the focus on the idea that students either can't read or won't read. The authors ask the teachers to examine their own reading skills to help better understand the struggles that face students with reading and comprehension. Daniels and Zemelman provide a passage about the sport cricket, but they provide  no background information which makes the text very difficult to understand, they then ask questions that can be easily answered if you refer back to the text they provided, but even when answering the questions comprehension is not needed. They write, "See, you got 100%! Congratulations! You say you didn't really understand it?Hmmm. Now we are starting to see content-reading from a kidseye view; how students can read every word on a page without deep understanding." As teachers we often start blaming other people for our students inability to read, I know many secondary teachers that blame elementary school teachers lack of attention on their own students current failures, but this is simply not fair. This chapter addresses both the question of what is literacy and the relationship between literacy and teaching.

The first point the book makes is that reading is more than decoding. The authors explain that "phonics means the sound-symbol correspondence between spoken and printed language" but they want teachers to understand that most of the struggles readers face today is not with sounding out words, but actually understanding how all of those words are connected. While reading the cricket passage they proved that my problem did not come from pronouncing the words, but understanding the context in which they were being used. The second point made is that reading is an active constructive process. When reading the cricket passage it was more difficult because it was not something that I am familiar with, but if the passage had been about something I easily relate to like, tennis then I as a reader would easily "click" through it. "Clicking" is basically smooth reading that requires little thought because the subject is familiar to the reader.  When reading the cricket passage I did not understand what I was reading and as a result I could feel myself thinking, or trying to understand. When struggling with a passage the reader may do things like re-read for clarity, make hypothesis about what is being discussed, look for root words, or visualize what is being discussed all of this is part of "clunking" which is the opposite of "clicking" it is the the process of making meaning out of difficult text.  The main point of clicking and clunking is to understand that meaning is not clearly spelled out from an author to a reader, but is built through concepts of the mind. The third point made is that good readers have a repertoire of thinking strategies they use to comprehend texts. Daniels and Zemelman emphasize that as readers we rely on specific thinking skills that we have developed through our life as readers. The following is the list provided in the book:
"Thinking Strategies of Effective Readers:
-visualize (make mental pictures or sensory images)
-connect(connect to own experience, to events in the world, to other readings)
-question(to actively wonder, to surface uncertainties, to interrogate the text)
-infer(to predict, hypothesize, interpret, draw conclusions)
-evaluate(to determine importance, make judgements)
-analyze(to notice text structures, author's craft, vocabulary, purpose, theme, point of view)
-recall(to retell, summarize, remember information)
-self-monitor(to recognize and act on confusion, uncertainly, attention problems)"
Although we might not be aware of when our brain uses these processes, it is not because they are not being used but rather it is because reading becomes automatic and unconscious.The book compared reading to driving some place familiar, often when we drive to a specific place often our brain takes on autopilot and we get to our destination without much thought, just like when we read texts that are familiar to us. However, when we drive to a new location our focus is much different and more aware, just like when we read material that is unfamiliar. The fourth topic addressed is the importance of prior knowledge to comprehension. The authors provide another passage and again do not give any information about the passage until after. Without the context the passage makes little sense, but then the authors give the clue, Columbus, the passage comes together. With the one word clue, prior knowledge is activated and the readers understanding of the text takes on new meaning. The use of and importance of schema is necessary to our understanding of reading. "It helps to think of a schema as a web that stores and connects all of the information in your mind related to a given topic." By switching on the schema for Columbus, I was able to comprehend the passage. So prior knowledge is in students heads, but until they activate their schema that knowledge does not link to the material. The overall argument is that reading is built on previous knowledge. Which leads to the question: How do we build on knowledge that is not there? The rest of the book will supply helpful tips on making content that is hard and has very little background information for students schemas, more easily understood.
The overall argument of the chapter is that reading is not as simple as receiving a message, but rather using strategies to build upon prior knowledge." If as teachers we teach reading rather than assign it then methods, tools, activities, and procedures can help our students understand and remember our content better-and maybe even, dare we hope get interested in it." As we all know: interest is a key component in the desire to read and the overall understanding of the reading.  Until next time...