Reading

Reading

             After reading the assignments I’ve have realized that much more goes into teaching reading than what we realize at the time we are being taught.  I like to read a lot of different material, mostly history and science fiction, however I have no real memory of what made me want to read.  I remember learning to read in school, you know the phonics, the sounding out of words, sentence structure and so on.  I remember my parents reading to me at night and when I needed help as a kid, but I know they didn’t push me if I did not want to read.  I just read because I liked it, well at least that is what I thought. 

            In the past somewhere, for the life of me I just don’t remember, I was taught more than just how to read.  I was taught to look at other aspects as I read.  Read to understand I remember a teacher saying once. In the readings that we have read for this assignment much of what was said seems familiar to me.  Connect what you are reading to something in your life; try to see what is going on in the reading by visualizing the story.  Ask questions to yourself as you read as this will lead to more reading to more discoveries.  I see now that there was a lot more to my reading instruction than what I remember.  I am in this position now as a parent.  My two children know how to read.  They know how to form sentences, how to pronounce words that they have never seen before or at least try to, but they are at the point where reading comprehension is an essential.  They need to understand the whole of the story.  If this is done now it will make it easier when they get onto content –area reading.  I must have started about this time to understand that reading is important.   Once a person is taught to read for more than just understanding the words it will be easier for them when they move on to content-area reading.  As a parent, and a future teacher, teaching to read doesn’t stop in elementary school.  We must be able to be there and support this learning and not just hoping that it will happen on its own. 

            In content-area reading I now know that there needs to be some prior knowledge of a subject, but also a person must know the context of the reading.  The best example I saw of this was in the Columbus sample.  Being a history major I know about Columbus, well at least I should know.  When I read that passage I had no idea it was about Columbus until the reading mentioned the word.  I understood all the words and I could read the passage, but without the context it really had no meaning.  Also if I didn’t know about Columbus the passage would still be meaningless.  Readers have a lot of prior knowledge and experiences that they can attach to reading.  As teachers we must be able to get them to use it so they can remember and actually understand the content material they are trying to understand.  We need to build and use the student’s prior knowledge to help them when they are trying to understand and remember what they are reading.  It is and will be an ongoing process, one that needs to be continual. 

            Reading is more than just pronouncing words and linking them together into sentences.  It needs to be more in order for students to understand and remember the content they are reading.  It is how I became interested in history, I read it and I understood it which led to my deep interest in history.  This is something that I will instill in my own kids and my future students.