1. What is Reading? (And why does it matter what it is?)

2. Definition #1 Reading is extracting meaning from text.

3. The Simple (some would say, “Simplistic”) View: 1.We read one letter at a time and add these up to identify a “word”: C + E + L + L + O = CELLO 2.Then we add words up to make sentences: I PLAY THE CELLO. And we add sentences up to make paragraphs, and so on.

4. The Assumptions 1.English is a phonetic language; therefore 2.Once students have learned the “sounds that letters make,” all they need to do is practice to learn to read. 3.If they speak the language fluently, once they’ve learned to decode fluently (have achieved “automaticity”), they’ll be able to shift their attention to comprehending what they’ve read. 4.Therefore, if students aren’t comprehending, it’s because their language skills are poor or they aren’t decoding fluently. 5.The way to deal with struggling readers is to have them practice fluency and reduce the difficulty of texts’ language (use shorter, simpler words and sentences)

5. “Readability”: Let’s test these assumptions with a passage from the Negative Dialectics, by Theodore Adorno  Count out 100 words from the first, second, or third paragraphs (depending on where you sit).  Count the number of sentences in each 100-word passage.  Count the number of syllables in each passage (assume one syllable per word; put a mark above the second, third, fourth, etc.) syllables of each word (skip single syllable words). Add all the marks you made + 100.  Compute the average number of sentences for the three passages and the average number of syllables.  Plot these on the chart (next slide) to determine the “grade level” of the reading.

7. Problems with the “Simple” View:  It ignores a reader’s prior knowledge of the content of the text.  It ignores stylistic and rhetorical issues with the writing.  English is phonetic in principle, but often not in practice (so the idea that we read every letter and add them up makes little actual sense).

8. Definition #2: Reading is constructing meaning from text.

9. The Assumptions 1.Readers’ prior knowledge is critical to both decoding (identifying words and reading fluently) and comprehending a text. 2.Reading is a “psycholinguistic guessing game” (Goodman, 1981) in which readers recursively: a)anticipate what is coming (in terms of words, phrases, and ideas) based on cues and prior knowledge, b)sample the text to verify or correct their predictions, c)make adjustments in what they know and can predict d)Sample more of the text, make new predictions, and so on and so on… 3.Therefore, if a reader is struggling, it is likely because they aren’t predicting, sampling, and revising as they go; or because of a lack of prior knowledge.

10. An Example I P L A Y T HE CE LLO.

11. Prior Knowledge is Da Bomb  Prior knowledge of content, of the author’s intentions, of language, and of stylistic and rhetorical conventions of writing can all hang readers up.  DID YOU KNOW THIS?  Learning is nearly always a process of making sense of new input in light of what you already knew.  WITHOUT PRIOR KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING IS HARD, HARD, HARD.  This explains why non-intuitive subjects like organic chemistry and calculus or a non-European language like Arabic or Chinese are so challenging. It’s NOT because the content is necessarily difficult; it’s because learners start from ground zero in terms of prior knowledge when they learn them.

12. But So Are Strategies for Reading and Writing and USING Texts to Produce Meaning. And Aren’t You Glad That Is What This Course Is About?

13. So, Let’s Get Started!  The Grandparent of all reading comprehension strategies is the Directed Reading – Thinking Activity (Stauffer, 1958):  Here’s how you do it: 1.Preview a text with students. Ask them what they expect to read about, based on the cover, the back pages, the title, or the first sentence. RECORD these predictions on the board. 2.Read with them (using Shared Reading) or silently a short passage—a sentence or two or a paragraph. Revisit the predictions on the board. How many were accurate? How many can you eliminate as possible? And, now that you’ve read a bit, what do you think could come next? RECORD THESE PREDICTIONS ON THE BOARD. 3.Read on, a bit farther, maybe a page. Revisit the predictions, discuss, predict. RECORD THOSE PREDICTIONS ON THE BOARD. 4.And so on, lengthening the passages as you go. At the end, revisit your process, summarize, discuss what you learned that you didn’t know before.

19. DR-TA RULES!!!  Because it builds on prior knowledge.  Because it’s communal and social.  Because it imitates proficient readers’ “natural” processes.  Because it gives YOU, the teacher, immediate, ongoing assessment about the students’ comprehension, including any misconceptions they might have (but DON’T correct those misconceptions before the students read).  Because it empowers readers to use their own sense-making skills.  YES, it takes time, but the pay off is that EVERYONE will understand the reading (and that means a wonderful feeling of success and fewer management problems).

20. But, you ask, what if students don’t have much prior knowledge of a topic or the text’s language is really hard? Wouldn’t you know, there are strategies for these situations, too. The WORST thing you can do as a teacher is dumb- down your curriculum or stop reading challenging texts when students struggle.

21. Are We Done Yet? Here Are The TOP FIVE URBAN MYTHS ABOUT READING 1.You can learn to SPEED READ. 2.DYSLEXIA is a common cause of reading problems. 3.Struggling readers come from families that don’t value reading or education. 4.People don’t read as much as they used to. 5.There is a literacy crisis in the United States caused by television and the Internet.