The Reading Process and the Importance of PD around Technologies

We began class today with a discussion around the reading process.  Although this conversation was a bit “heavy” with vocabulary terms I am not completely familiar with, if it taught me nothing else, it reminded me about the complexity of the reading process and that when students are struggling with reading there can be many different reasons.  

Students come to us from many different backgrounds.  As a former primary teacher, it was so interesting (and challenging), trying to decipher difficulties children were having with printed word.  Often, the pure and simple fact was that they had not been exposed to print or meaningful reading experiences before coming to school.  We discussed today the emotional component for reading that comes from being a child.  I have always loved to read, and my mother and father always joke about how when I was younger they would try to skip pages in the story books they were reading me at night, and I always caught them.  The desire to read comes from our working memory, and unfortunately for many students, they haven’t had these meaningful experiences.
Reading is not innate – language is.  Reading begins with our oral language.  The different parts of language include: sounds, meanings, structures.  Through enriched language experiences students begin to put words into phrases which give language and conversation meaning. These many enriched oral language experiences are so important for students before they begin to experiment with print.  There are so many processes happening when reading, and without the basis of language and sounds, students will not succeed.  Another thing that again was an “ah ha” moment for me was the executive functioning and motor skills that are associated with reading.  With so many young children (especially boys) having attention issues, this plays a large part in their reading experiences at school.  I have found that often splitting the 30 minute independent reading block with these students can be really helpful.  For example, offering students 15 minutes of reading and then 15 minutes of reading with technology (for example, Tumblebooks, RazKids), or practicing phonics activities.  This can help students stay engaged and not become behaviour problems or reluctant readers.  An Ipad in the classroom can really help with this task!

Phonemic Awareness is such an important piece of the reading process, and one that is quite prevalent in lower elementary classrooms.  Phonemic awareness is a prerequisite to learning to read with efficiency.  Due to circumstances like environment (for example, ESL or an environment with few enriched language experiences) some students do not have a lot of experiences with phonemic awareness.  Students who demonstrate phonemic awareness have knowledge of nursery rhymes, are able to matching the sounds in words (for example, recognizing words with the same beginning, same middle sounds, same final sounds, words that rhyme), can split syllables (separate the beginning sound form the rest of the word and blend sounds.  There are so many ways that you can do this in the lower elementary classrooms, including really cool and fun apps like Montessori Crosswords, Starfall and fun Youtube songs like this one. 

To me, talking about the brain processing portion of the reading process can be quite confusing.  I snapped a quick pic of an image taken from M.J. Adams book Beginning to Read: Thinking about and Learning about Print, as I thought it was one that was quite straightforward and easy to understand.

It was also interesting to think about how new learning requires selective attention.  It requires more of your brain energy to commit it to short term memory, which with repeated practice will be committed to long term memory.  It just reiterates the importance of practice with skills (even though time can make this challenging in the classroom) so each student has a chance to succeed.

I really enjoyed this PBS video which I thought clearly illustrated how students can struggle with reading, and gives a realistic, in-depth look at students’ real struggles.  I was really captivated by Russell Train’s story (which if you skip ahead to 42 minutes you will find), and the extra effort and work his family puts into his education.  It did however remind me that with parental support and sometimes even money, these struggles can be tackled as a team; however, not all children are lucky enough to have this.

To help students I strongly believe we need to start at a young age.  We can apply assistive technology (whether it is to keep attention, or as a remediation tool), add remediation, and if necessary add compensatory strategies.