Module 1: Reading Reflection

What are some of the major differences between a skills approach to literacy and a comprehensive or sociopsycholinguistic approach?

I have never heard of teaching reading in these terms.  It was interesting to read these chapters and watch the video because it reassured me that when doing a running record on a student, that I had been doing them correctly! I also found it interesting that the way a teacher views reading theory affects the way a child learns to read- I hadn't ever really thought of it in this way.

In the teaching of reading there are some people that believe that it should be only skills based.  This means that students are learning more phonemic awareness and students are learning how letters sound separately and blended together.  During skills based reading instruction, students are identifying words and decoding words letter by letter.  This approach emphasis that reading is only fluency, the identification of letters and their sounds and those relationships between the letters.  It is taught in stages: smaller sets of skills and language and then the comprehension of texts. As Weaver's book indicates reading is taught in an "upwards" approach. In a school setting, students may think they are reading as long as they are correctly pronounciating words in a sentence or paragraph and reading quickly, however, if they are unable to comprehend what those words mean together and cannot identify the overall message then they are just simple reciting words and not reading for meaning. I think that it is important for students to understand phonics but it shouldn't be taught in isolation. 

In contrast, a comprehensive or sociopsycholinguistic approach to reading encompasses reading for meaning and using schema in order to build this meaning.  According to Weaver's book, in this approach to teaching reading the teacher uses simple and predictable texts to read with the students before teaching letter sounds and letter relationships.  Higher quality literature is usually reread and used to teach skills.  Phonics is taught in combination with reading strategies and is used to identify meaning through the text, and not to just identify words. The ultimate goal of reading is to take away something from the text or passage- the only way to do that is to teach students how to construct meaning using their own schema and the text. This is the better choice for teaching reading because it encompasses all components of what reading is- phonics and skills as well as comprehension and reading for meaning.

I had a student that was able to understand what she read even though she had a lot of difficulty pronounciating words because she didn't understand or use phonics.  She used her syntax and schema to comprehend what she was reading. As a teacher, it is vital to understand the importance of how reading theory affects how students view reading.  I want my students to understand that reading is for creating meaning not just for reciting words. I want my students to know that it doesn't make you a "good" reader if you can recite words quickly but cannot construct meaning from what was read.