The Importance Of Reading

When it comes to literacy, you have to first keep in mind where the Hispanic person is born. Birthplace is a major factor. When a student is born outside of the U.S., they have more Spanish skills than English unlike someone who was born in the U.S. They speak Spanish in their homes, but they also learn a lot of English everyday also while living in the United States. Of course someone who was born in the U.S. will have higher English literacy as opposed to someone who wasn't. The Hispanics who are immigrants are at a disadvantage, especially when it comes to socio-economics and education. Together, socio-economics background and education are closely related to literacy just as much as it is to bilingual. Hispanics have to coordinate work with learning English, while also being able to be there for their children.(Ortiz, 150)

More young americans nowadays are being raised in homes speaking non-English, but these students are falling behind in schools where there is not a bilingual program available. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in schools without a bilingual education program, 71% of English speakers are at or above the basic requirements for fourth grade reading while merely 30% of non-English speakers reach this level. 35% of English and 8% of non-English speakers reach proficient reading levels while only 9% of English and 1% of non-English speakers perform at advanced levels. It’s evident that the availability of a bilingual program is crucial to the success of an individual who needs the resources that can be given to them through the use of bilingual education. The percentages of the non-English speaking students previously mentioned could undoubtedly be comparable to those percentages of the English speaking students if the education they were being provided with was cohesive to their comfortability, and the material being taught was in a language they could better understand.

“The more you read, the more things you know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” This is how Dr. Seuss thought of reading, and I think of it in much the same way. Literacy is everywhere and influences us every day, therefore, it plays a major part in each of our lives. I believe that reading is an interactive activity in which learning happens, or as Clay (2001) defines it, “…a message-getting, problem-solving activity” (p. 1). Reading is the process through which one reads information and from doing so, constructs meaning about the material. The more exposure and practice one has with reading, the more knowledge one gains. In this paper, I will begin by discussing my own personal educational philosophy, then continue by stating and explaining four of my beliefs about the reading process and the research that is found to support each of them before sharing the remaining questions I have about literacy. I am an existentialist, and a strong supporter of a balanced literacy approach. My beliefs about literacy come from these foundations and perspectives that I embrace. For students to be successful in their literacy development, I believe that identity acceptance in the classroom is crucial, instruction for all students must be differentiated, direct and explicit instruction is at times necessary, and vocabulary is a significant component in the ‘Big Five’ of children’s literacy development.

Since early development, we have been taught that learning reading and writing strategies are essential for our own language and literacy development. We’ve used language to express our feelings and communicate with each other and literacy to become better-educated individuals and familiarize ourselves with problem-solving and decision-making skills. Specifically, in modern society, we apply these skills in texting, emailing, and social media such as Facebook and Twitter to communicate with one another. Similarly, we use news articles, blogs, and e-Books as a source of reading material for academic or personal purposes. Some people may argue that they don’t read and write because they don’t have time and it’s “too hard”. Nevertheless, these factors equally contribute to the importance of literacy skills in academic success as it will be examined in my personal experience as a reader and writer.

If you couldn’t read or write, how would you tackle your daily life? Being literate is a crucial part of everyone’s life; reading and writing are essential for a person’s success. Every single day, it’s used, whether it’s for an Advanced Placement Language class or reading a billboard as you’re driving past. As a child, I grew up reading on a daily basis and I believe that I am as successful as I am on behalf of it. Countless memories have been created, thanks to the multiple books that have been read and the umpteen amount of papers that I’ve written. Throughout the numerous years of my education, my teachers and parents left a long lasting impact on my reading and writing skills.

Everyone around me was silently sitting, staring down at their laps. Me, on the other hand, would just sit there and stare at a wall, while humming to myself. I never understood why all of my classmates enjoyed reading books. Correction; I actually just did not understand what was wrong with me, and why I did not enjoy reading like all of the other kids did. Reading never sparked my interest due to many reasons, including; being distracted, being laughed at, and the books I was forced to read.

We learn primarily through language, and use language to express our understanding. In order for English learners to have access to core content, they need academic language and literacy skills (Echevarria, Vogt and Short). Academic language is used to succeed in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Often English learner students enter school with limited to no exposure to academic language. These students are from homes in which English is rarely spoken. They are bright students who would excel in classrooms whose academic language was the same as their native language. The task No Child Left Behind has given to researchers and teachers is to educate the increased number of immigrants in English speaking classes. It is important to realize that there are approximately 180 native languages among the student body population. Spanish by far surpasses other language groups.

Most of the studies on the reading instruction and achievement of young bilingual Hispanic in the United States is concentrating on their abilities of English reading direction and performance, not their first language instruction or performance. However, bilingual students got high scores on English reading measures when they received the instruction in both English and Spanish rather than students who instructed with English language only.

I can't help but laugh when going through my old IEP paperwork from grade school. Most of the teachers concerns were my reading skills, and handwriting. The school threw me into handwriting classes grades 1-5. I'd miss a 1/4th of my regular class just with that. Jokes on them my handwriting is still terrible. From reading all of their paperwork and the dates on them, the reading concerns came from right after my mom passed away. I was more than capable of doing well in that area. In fact, I really loved reading and still do. I just didn't want to be there. I didn't like my peers, and I didn't like them asking about my mom all the time. You know how kids are, they are vicious and sometimes said mean things kids say. The teachers didn't help

An analysis of reading data from state, district, school, and five grade level 5 classrooms yielded the following results. The Asian-Pacific Islander subgroup across all grade levels significantly outperformed all subgroups at the state level. Because there were no Asian-Pacific Islander students at the district level, this data will not be considered. Thus, at the district and local levels white students outperformed all subgroups. In reading, the percentage of mastery among Whites (45%) was triple than that for the mastery of Blacks (15%) and Hispanics (15%). ELL and Special Education students across all grade levels had stable and low performance.

“Of the 281 million people age 5 and older in the United States in 2007, 55.4 million individuals — or 20 percent — reported speaking a language other than English at home.” (Newsroom) As the number of non-English speaking people in our country increases there is also a debate going on as well. This debate is over whether American Schools should offer a bilingual education to accommodate these people or not. “Bilingual Education is the practice of teaching non-English speaking children in their native language, while they are learning English.”(Bilingual Education) In “The Achievement of Desire”, Rodriguez writes about his experiences growing up as a Mexican-American student and the toll that it took on his life. Bilingual education may

My philosophy of literacy is centered on providing a learning environment rich in authentic literature, instruction that is engaging, fun, and balanced, collaborative, and also involving families in the child’s education. My ultimate goal of literacy instruction is to help children become lifelong readers and writers by providing the skills necessary to comprehend, construct, and make meaning of text, speak, and write. (Torgesen, 2002). According to the National Reading Panel, there are five essential components that must be taught in effective reading programs: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. (Reading Horizons). According to Konza (2014), reading instruction should be changed to six foundational reading elements, adding oral language and early literacy. I also believe that early literacy should be

Researchers use qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods to conduct a study. Each methodology contains advantages and disadvantages; therefore, researchers need to decide on an appropriate methodology for the study (McLeod, 2008). The article “Effects of the Helping Early Literacy with Practice Strategies (HELPS) reading fluency program with Latino English Language Learners: A preliminary Evaluation” (Begeny, Ross, Greene, Mitchell, & Whitehouse, 2012) and the article “Mainstream first-grade teachers’ understanding of strategies for accommodating the needs of English language learners” (Hite & Evans, 2006) both focus on ELLs instructional strategies but utilize different research methods.

Reading and writing are both important; you can’t have one without the other. They are skills that are increased constantly due to little things that most times are not noticed. Whether it is from a book to a poem, there will always be a way that it helps out your school performance. Reading and writing in general only helps absorb information, and enhance leisure or school related writing tasks. It has also made life itself so much easier because reading and writing are so beneficial for school and for life. How much you read and write today, will somehow affect your future job, family, position, or even your salary.

A Chinese philosopher once said,” it is better to read 10,000 books, and then travel 10,000 miles.” Reading is a critical part of life, whether it is to read about the news that is happening around the world, to read a park that is the sign by teachers and classes, or simply just reading because we like to read. In many cases, kids who were willing to read comic books with a lot of pictures at a young age, often liked reading. Even though I was not into reading at a young age, I still read some picture books at a very young age, and it was heavily influenced by my parents and my elementary school teachers. Learning to read became a crucial part of my life because reading helped me learn more vocabulary, know more about what is right or