What WAC Can Teach Us About Reading To Learn By Mary Lou Odom

My early reading experiences reflect the history that Vogt and Shearer (2011) describe in the first chapter of Reading Specialists and Literacy Coaches in the Real World. The basal reading programs of the 1970s and 1980s included “leveled readers, phonics activities, and a great deal of comprehension skill practice, usually found on the pages of the accompanying workbooks. The programs also included highly structured, detailed teacher’s guides, with different lesson plans for each of the three instructional groups” (Vogt & Shearer, 2011, p.13).

he most fundamental responsibility of schools is teaching students to read. Indeed, the future success of all students hinges upon their ability to become proficient readers. Recent scientific studies have allowed us to understand more than ever before how literacy develops, why some children have difficulty, and what constitutes best instructional practice. Scientists now estimate that fully 95 percent of all children can be taught to read. Yet, in spite of all our knowledge, statistics reveal an alarming prevalence of struggling and poor readers that is not limited to any one segment of society:

I teach fourth grade language arts where my main focus is to prepare my students to write a personal narrative for the Nebraska State Writing Test in January. Reading and writing are intertwined in my area of professional responsibility as I motivate my students to write a well-organized, creative personal narrative. As I have taught writing, I have found reading, writing, speaking, and listening go hand in hand when composing a personal narrative (Bruning, 2011, p. 299).

Many students who struggle with reading ask why should we read, what is the point? The point is that being able to read opens you up a whole new world of knowledge and imagination. But to have that new world opened up you need to be able to comprehend what you are reading. The primary goal of reading is to determine the meaning of

“To Dumb for Complex Texts?”, an essay by Mark Bauerlein, states high schools are at fault for students inability to comprehend complex texts. Bauerlein starts by noting students who enter college are not as prepared as they should be, evidenced by their placement exam scores. Bauerlein goes on to state the lack of readiness is due to high schools increasing focus on digital reading, rather than the physical form. Additionally Bauerlein writes that complex reading is not thoroughly integrated in to student curriculum. Bauerlein believes that because of the high schools simple literature curriculum, students beginning college have not been properly exposed to complex texts, and as a result cannot properly comprehend the readings assigned in

When people read they often just skim through, “Although there are virtues to skimming, the vast majority of writing tasks you will encounter in college and in the workplace require your conversancy with material you have read.” (David Rosenwasser, of Home from Nowhere:Remaking Our Everyday World for the Twenty-first Century, as Rosenwasser defines, become conversant 107).

Reading can promote more meaningful learning. According to results from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE, 2004),

In “Writing to Read”, Graham and Hebert present the results of studies, which where thoroughly analyzed, in order to support the importance of writing instruction towards the development of reading skills. The report, however, was not created with the simple purpose of making an argument. Through the use of meta analysis, it recognizes the most effective approaches in order to aid teachers in developing and applying effective strategies.

After reading Susan D. Blum I do very much believe that reading is being valued less and less and that students are not using reading as a daily tool. Even for me I believe reading is getting rare as I skim a lot of my reading instead of actually reading it. The idea of assigned reading, as the core activity of college students, is old. Students these days don’t value reading as much as they don’t believe it’s a necessity in class. However, I’ve thought that about this many times and I believe if you don’t read then you won’t be able to do well in the class and won’t ever grasp the full knowledge that might be necessary.

The use of formal and informal reading assessments provide important data that allow educators to identify at risk students (Tompkins, 2010). The data collected from the assessments address any factors that may prohibit the development of students’ reading and writing skills. In addition to the assessments, the more an educator can learn about students’ backgrounds and their past reading, language development, and writing experiences the more instructional strategies can be designed to specifically meet the needs of diverse learners in the classroom.

This literacy gap affects students’ abilities to access core textbooks and communicate and write effectively within the various subject areas. The literacy gap catches up to many of our students as they enter high school and feel overwhelmed by the challenges of increasing academic standards and more difficult vocabulary. Because they not only lack the language that will help them access and understand their classes, many students struggle with content-area reading and writing in these subjects. This could be an easy fix if the instructors that stood before these students were able to take the mastery of their content and adapt it as it deems appropriate for the young minds they are partly responsible for. Children who lack the academic language of school struggle to meet literacy requirements, and they often feel overwhelmed in the classroom. This is just the beginning of the spiral because once the students have met that stage of being overwhelmed, they often begin thinking of the short term way of dealing with this, which could be anything from completely giving up and having the grades that show this or actually dropping out.

As the American education system works to facilitate changes to improve the success of students, much attention has been given to the importance of reading instruction. The decline of reading scores across the country has called for researchers to investigate the reading process and decipher which methods best promote successful reading. Alan Kamhi (2009) stirred a variety of reactions after authoring The Case for the Narrow View of Reading, in which he argues that poor reading skills stem from the American education system combining word recognition and comprehension into a single unit, and from a lack of acquiring content knowledge in other academic areas. Kamhi argues that teaching instruction in reading should focus solely on word recognition while

Students having hard times in comprehending the thought of the text and what the author implies. It seems to be reading by words but not reading between the lines. It is important to know how comprehension plays an integral part in a manner of thinking and conceptualizing facts and ideas from the

“One of the important ingredients to reading is having adequate background knowledge and knowing the meaning of words” (Bos and Vaughn 2015). This is why vocabulary is essential to the understanding text and being able to learn concepts. As a result, “Students with a low vocabulary have a difficult time understanding what they read.” (Vaughn and Boss 2015) This is because they don’t have enough basic knowledge to comprehend what they are reading making the completion of assignments virtually impossible. These students need the tools to be able to grasp the concepts they read in order to learn. In addition, they need to learn the vocabulary associated with specific subjects to understand and complete assignments in those classes. This can be a major problem for students that are learning disabled because they can difficulty with comprehension, retention and application of information.

Reading requires a habit. Without much practice, students do not have good reading skills. With a lot of reading, students will be able to find out past events, current, and can predict the events that will occur later. Students who have reading habits are capable of using time to read activities. Demand for information needs that continue to grow over time can actually be facilitated through reading activities. But this fact becomes different when the reading habits of students are still low.