The+Nature+of+the+Reading+Process

=  THE NATURE OF THE READING PROCESS   =

What is Reading?
 * A complex, active process of using a variety of skills simultaneously to construct meaning from text
 * A holistic act that allows readers to continually and actively construct meaning from text
 * Readers must use their prior knowledge, their knowledge of spoken and written language, and their knowledge of the topic of the text in an interrelated manner.
 * By drawing on their prior knowledge, readers can integrate different pieces of information in the text together to form a solid understanding.
 * “Reading is a process in which the pronunciation of words gives access to their meanings; the meaning of the words add together to form the meanings of clauses and sentences; and the meanings of sentences combine to produce the meanings of paragraphs.” - Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, and Wilkinson from __Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading__ (1985)
 * A process in which knowledge possessed by the reader is skillfully integrated with information from the text
 * Should always be authentic- for a purpose
 * Reading is constructive, strategic, and a lifelong pursuit.

What is Writing?
 * A constructive process that is intricately interrelated with the reading process
 * An active process that requires a collaboration of a variety of skills
 * A process involving the construction and communication of information through graphic symbols. Through these graphic symbols, writers can display information that relays a certain meaning or message.
 * Writing can come in many forms. These forms may include lists, letters, books, essays, emails, stories, etc.
 * It is done for a purpose- Writers write to communicate a message, idea, thought, or experience to a particular audience for a particular purpose.
 * Good writers think about how their intended audience will perceive their writing, as well as think about the meaning they are putting across.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">“Everyone has the capacity to write, writing can be taught, and teachers can help students become better writers… Writers learn from each session with their hands on a keyboard or around a pencil as they drank, rethink, revise, and draft again (2004).”- National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)

<span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 18px;">Reading and Writing as a Developmental Process <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">// continuum than as an all-or-nothing phenomenon.”- // (International Reading Association <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">(IRA) & the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), 1998)
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**// “ //**// Reading and writing acquisition is conceptualized better as a developmental //
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Reading and writing are complex processes that result from the continual engagement and interplay of development and learning.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">As young children continue to learn, they increasingly consolidate information from oral language, print, pictures, and play into patterns. These patterns then allow them to increase their automaticity and fluency in reading and writing.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Although reading and writing skills continue to develop throughout life, the early childhood years - from birth to age 8 – are the most important years for literacy development. In the beginning years, children experiment with language by making sounds, imitating tones, and reading facial expressions, and gestures. They begin to associate sound sequences that they frequently hear into words.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">As children grow, develop, and interact, they begin to process letters, translate them into sounds, and connect them with a known meaning. At the same time, they use their developing knowledge of patterns of letter-sound correspondences in familiar words to figure out how to pronounce unfamiliar words.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">A continuum of reading and writing development is extremely valuable in identifying appropriate, but also challenging, goals for children’s literacy learning.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Using a developmental continuum enables teachers to test or assess a child’s progress against realistic goals, and then the ability to adapt their instruction to ensure the further progress of that child’s literacy abilities.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">“Reading is not a technical skill acquired once and for all in the primary grades, but rather a developmental process. A reader’s competence begins to grow through engagement with various types of texts and wide reading for various purposes over a lifetime.” (NCTE, 2004)

<span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 18px;">Reading and Writing as a Social Process
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Children acquire reading, writing, and linguistic skills through their //interactions// with others.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">“In this socially constructed literacy environment, readers need the opportunity to interact with both peers and adults in a wide variety of settings as they learn and practice language and literacy knowledge, skills, and strategies (p. 62)” – Braunger & Lewis
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Social interaction is a key ingredient in literacy instruction and learning that allows readers at all stages to develop their individual understandings and knowledge.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Vygotsky emphasizes the importance of social interaction in driving the reading and writing process, as well as all other learning processes. As Vygotsky first proposed, and a wealth of studies have since proven, learners gradually internalize and control ways of thinking, learning, and doing through practice in supportive social interactions.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Vygotsky, along with Bruner, Applebee, and Langer, stresses the significance of social scaffolding. Social scaffolded instruction helps learners reach an independent level of a certain skill by careful and guided instruction at a time when the learner is at the edge of independent capability.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Another key social tool in building and developing students’ literacy skills is discussion (Braunger & Lewis, 2006).
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Discussion and social interaction also produce authentic application of literacy and appreciation for literacy.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Read alouds, shared reading, paired reading, repeated reading, and book groups are all effective and exciting social activities than can increase a child’s desire to read, as well as improve their literacy learning.

<span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 18px;">Reading and Writing as a Cultural Process
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">When teachers and schools understand the framework of experiences, values, and background knowledge coming from their students, they are better able to introduce them to more public forms of literacy.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Dyson, from the San Francisco East Bay Teacher Study Group, stresses the importance of highlighting cultural differences as //possibilities// rather than //problems//. Teachers need to work extra hard to make children’s literacy competence visible and to acknowledge the breadth of language, problem-posing, and problem solving skills needed in our society.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Erickson’s research describes the importance of culturally focused and responsive literacy instruction as a way of providing for success for minority students. This means using communication patterns compatible with students’ norms, beliefs, and values of their home culture. Students need to be able to use their own cultural background knowledge and experiences as tools and beginning points to make real-world connections with what they are facing and experiencing in their learning at school.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Each student’s culture provides the beginning of their literacy learning journey and the foundation for the emergence of reading and writing behaviors. Therefore, the ways in which students have come to “be” in their home culture are crucial to their development of written language modes of reading and writing (Braunger & Lewis, 2006).
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">It is essential that educators take the time to place culture into much careful consideration. Doing so would prevent students with cultural differences from faltering in early literacy tasks and spending their entire educational careers attempting to catch up.

<span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 18px;">Reading and Writing as a Language/Linguistic Process
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Effective literacy classrooms consistently and continually exhibit authentic and purposeful book discussions, conversations about the use of language and literacy processes, and conversations about metacognitive purposes of reading (Braunger & Lewis, 2006).
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Metacognitive conversations about reading strategies and understandings are critical to successful reading by adolescents.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Classrooms that give students various opportunities to communicate in interactive ways support language development. Effective and supportive literacy environments provide opportunities to hear the reading aloud of skilled readers, observe adults who read often themselves, experience routine/consistent use of materials for reading and writing at home and at school, and receive adult support for children’s literacy activities.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Language development has proven to correlate with reading success, and both areas can be improved by consistent and continual use of children’s and young adult literature in read-aloud situations at school and at home (Braunger & Lewis, 2006).
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Teachers can further students’ language and linguistic development in the literacy environment by encouraging students to share books they have read, responding to literature through written and oral language, and participating regularly in social periods set aside for reading and writing.

<span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 18px;">Reading and Writing as a Cognitive/Metacognitive Thoughtful Process
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">// “Studies reveal that early readers are capable of being intentional in their use of metacognitive strategies. Even in these early grades, children make predictions about what they are to read, self-correct, reread, and question if necessary, giving evidence that they are able to adjust their reading when understanding breaks down.” // (International Reading Association (IRA) & the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), 1998)
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Reading is the result of particular cognitive processes. Readers must consciously and continually implement a variety of cognitive skills in order to make meaning of the text they read.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">A successful reader understands that they must make many types of decisions and choices while reading, such as how to tap into their wide range of background knowledge in order to make sense of new material.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Reading is an //ongoing// cognitive and metacognitive process because thinking readers have to constantly make connections from prior knowledge to new knowledge and constantly implement strategies in order to be successful (Braunger & Lewis, 2006).
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Children learn cognitive and metacognitive strategies through consistent teacher modeling and instruction. Teacher practices, such as the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DRTA) model important metacognitive strategies by helping children summarize ideas through text, ask questions, and set purposes and goals for reading (IRA, NAEYC, 1998).
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">To receive optimal meaning from reading, individuals must be engaged in four different cueing systems in tandem as they interact with text: pragmatic, semantic, syntactic, and graphophonic (Braunger & Lewis, 2006). Being actively involved in these systems allows for effective reading and understanding to take place. Students monitor their comprehension through ongoing metacognition, which reveals whether they need to fix any comprehension problems or obstacles.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Simple mental activities, such as decoding, syntactic processing, and lexical analysis become automatic as readers become more proficient.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Reading is a meaning-driven process and must be interpreted and treated as so. Therefore, cognitive strategy instruction is essential for achievement of literacy content area learning goals.

<span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 18px;">Reading and Writing as a Strategic Process
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">To be effective at drawing meaning from text, readers need to learn appropriate strategies for orchestrating and organizing all forthcoming information. To do this, they must use the four cueing systems together, in tandem, to produce effective learning (Braunger & Lewis, 2006).
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Strong readers and writers are able to assess their own knowledge in relation to the demands of the task, able to monitor their comprehension throughout the task, and finally be able to choose and implement a fix-up strategy when comprehension fails. They are also aware of the different purposes for reading and writing, and aware that they must change the way they interpret text or language in terms of those purposes (Commission on Reading, 1985).
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Some reading strategies that have been identified as critical to learning from text include the following: inferencing, predicting, reading selectively, identifying important information, monitoring, summarizing, and generating questions. In order to be successful at implementing these strategies, teachers must first model them //during// an authentic reading task.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Through coaching and supportive instruction, students are usually able to expand and improve their repertoire of strategies. Teachers can coach and illustrate these strategies through approaches such as concept-oriented reading instruction, scaffolding reading experiences, retellings, transactional strategies instruction, and reciprocal teaching (Braunger & Lewis, 2006).
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Ultimately, the main goal for teachers is to help students develop strong control of each strategy on their own and reach greater independence as readers and writers (Commission on Reading, 1985).

<span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 18px;">Reading and Writing as an Authentic/Purposeful Process = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =  Next Page
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">“As young authors struggle to express themselves, they come to grips with different written forms, syntactic patterns, and themes. They use writing for multiple purposes: to write descriptions, lists, and stories to communicate with others.” -(International Reading Association (IRA) & the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), 1998.)
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Children learn about written language as more experiences readers provide meaningful demonstrations of reading and writing. Examples of such demonstrations include reading environmental print (the word “stop” on a stop sign, etc.), writing and reading notes, reading and discussing children’s stories, making and using grocery lists, and reading letters from family and friends. Being exposed to these kinds of reading and writing demonstrations at an early age help children learn the pleasures and purposes of print (NCTE, On Reading, Learning to Read, and Effective Reading Instruction, 2004).
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">When discussions are authentic and meaningful, they lead to diverse interpretations of a text that deepen and expand the conversation. When teachers and students pick reading materials that adequately and appropriately tap into the diverse interests of students, students then have a greater desire and drive to gain information and meaning from those texts.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">When students choose to read on their own, motivated by their own interests, inquiries, and purposes, much more comprehension and conversation are generated.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Reading undoubtedly requires motivation and purpose. Teachers who maintain high levels of motivation and introduce tasks with enthusiasm and explanations of why they are doing the tasks will help the students become better readers.
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 16px;">Becoming a skilled reader requires learning to read and write for authentic and meaningful purposes, understanding that written material can be both stimulating and informative, and engaging in text that is motivating and thought-provoking.