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Journey to Reading Theories
Deborah Dilbeck
In my first year as a teacher, I knew very little about reading theories based on sound research. I had not thought about reluctant readers. I began as an eighth grade teacher believing that my students knew how to read and read well. I was excited about exploring novels with them like To Kill a Mockingbird. I imagined myself reading with students and assigning chapters to read at home. The next day I would assign essay questions that they would labor over anticipating my insightful comments. Next, we would probe the text together extracting every ounce of plot, character development, figurative language, and theme. My fantasies died on the first day.
Struggling middle school readers were an enigma to me, an avid, independent reader. The needs of my students challenged me to learn how to help them become autonomous readers. Reading theories facilitate my understanding of how readers grow toward independence.
Middle grades students need to read with Automaticity—the ability to decode words, recognize word meanings, the meaning of sentences, and the meaning of the text (LaBerg & Samuels 1974). Struggling readers resist reading; therefore, they lack the reading practice necessary to read automatically—to read fluently. Jonathan, a reluctant reader, used all kinds of strategies to avoid reading. Jonathan ranted to me one day after I had asked him to get on task for the third time, “Reading is not important! It won’t get you any where!” Later when we entered the cafeteria, I took Jonathan to our new principal, a man that I know Jonathan respects. Mr. Keith Colbert explained to him the importance of reading. He told Jonathan, “You’re wrong Jonathan. Reading is important. Reading can take you to places that you have never visited. Reading can stretch your world.” Soon there was a change in Jonathan. He loves Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. I caught him reading it during his literature circle time when he should have been reading Holes. Soon, I observed him reading both novels at the appropriate times. Jonathan told me for the first time ever, he has finished a chapter book, not just one book but two! My persistence backed up by my principal forced Jonathan to practice his reading. His
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reading has automaticity through continued practice. Practice made him feel successful. Now Jonathan loves reading.
Viewing reading as a cognitive process assisted my development as a reading teacher. Besieged, dependent readers often lack the schema necessary to make connections before reading, while reading, and after reading. Schema is like the filing cabinet of the mind. Within the schemata filing cabinet, there are files. The number of files and the thickness of the files depend upon the knowledge or experiences of the reader. Enriching schemata requires the student to add files, contribute information to these files, and to contribute information to existing files. Schema must be built and activated throughout the reading process.
Building background before reading is crucial. When reading Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, it is important for students to understand the pre-Civil Rights Movement. Interviews or guest speakers with similar experiences to Cassie Logan’s add so much to the reading. Continuous schemata development is necessary throughout the reading. Field trips and relevant movies add to prior knowledge and lay the ground work for future novels like To Kill a Mockingbird. Schemata help students to relate new information to prior knowledge; to determine the importance of information in the reading; to make inferences, and to remember information (Anderson & Pearson 1984).
Students build schemata based upon psychological and social experiences known as constructivism. Students relate to the same text in different ways. Discussions in groups; literature circles; and writings allow adolescents to share their unique perspectives of the text (Calfee & Patrick, 1995). Posting student work in the classroom and hallway boasts the accomplishments of my students’ constructive analysis of their texts: Marcus pauses with his friends outside my door to show off the rap that he created from T.J.’s perspective, Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry. Ebony stops to explain the village burrowed into the hillside from The Hobbit that she created. Both students previously dependent readers transformed into social, independent readers.
Similar to constructivism, sociocultural theory explains that students extract meaning from text based on their cultural and social backgrounds (Vygotsky 1978). Reading is best practiced socially. Reading a variety of texts that celebrate a variety of cultures provides for social and cultural understanding. The population at my middle
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school is very diverse. Culturally diverse students need materials that reflect and celebrate their culture. They need opportunities to share their perspectives.
My classroom library, a hodgepodge of classics and adolescent novels including authors Walter Dean Myers, Gary Soto, and Amy Tan, reflects the diversity in my classroom. Students choose books for independent reading from my classroom library as well as the school’s media center. The interactive model of reading explains that the reader files or adds new information to existing schemata including the knowledge of words, existing knowledge, and syntactic knowledge (Rumelhart, 1976). A diverse collection of reading materials and activities promotes the interaction of background and texts. However, my classroom library lacks the texts needed for literature circles.
To obtain novel sets that appeal to my diverse population, I choose students to scour the novel storage room for texts that interest them for literature circles. The selection committee brings copies of the novels to the classroom. Then the students examine the novels individually. Next they write letters to me explaining what they want to read and why. I place students into groups based on their reading choices. Each student in the literature circle produces a weekly product based on their texts.
Good readers make connections to their reading by keying into associations, feelings, attitudes, and ideas providing the deepest interaction between reader and text. This—I learned—is Reader Response Theory (Rosenblatt, L. M., 1978). Making meaningful connections to The Diary of Anne Frank is difficult for many of my students. While planning literature circle texts that would relate to The Holocaust and Anne Frank, a student, Kwame, asked, “Have you seen The Freedom Writers Diary?” I not only saw the movie, but I bought the book as well. When Erin Gruwell compares Hitler’s Nazis conquest of countries to gangs’ conquest of neighborhoods, I knew that I had the hook that I needed. I planned an entirely new unit calling it Fostering Tolerance. I purchased a few of the selections that Gruwell chose for her students: Durango Street, Zlata’s Diary, and The Wave. I bought Night and I Never Saw Another Butterfly as well. From the novel storage room, my selection committee chose The Diary of Anne Frank and Waiting for the Rain, a novel set in apartheid South Africa. The novel sets were used for literature circles. We read Goodrich and Hackett’s drama The Diary of Anne Frank during our
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work period as a class. The unit culminated with students completing a historical fiction piece with an adolescent protagonist caught up in The Holocaust.
Ultimately, readers utilize metacognition while reading. They analyze their cognitive processes and employ the necessary strategies that enable them to find meaning in text. Helping a student to this cognitive level is my ultimate goal. Modeling reading for my students helps them see the strategies that I employ while reading. Several times a week, I read aloud to my students stopping to use context clues; to define unfamiliar words; to make connections; to make inferences; to analyze figurative language, and to use fix up strategies. After reading, we discuss the text. Next, they continue reading in-groups or independently using the strategies that I modeled. The goal is to make metacognition automatic for my students. With practice on the part of my students, and careful monitoring on my part, my struggling readers will grow exponentially in their reading abilities. Students that read well feel successful in any academic setting.
Reading theories changed my view of reading instruction. Now I understand that reading is a cognitive process. As a reading teacher it is up to me to provide the research based instruction that my students need in order to comprehend and enjoy reading. For struggling readers, it is my responsibility to encourage them and require them to practice until they read with automaticity. Students need the necessary schema in order to comprehend what they read. I understand that my students construct meaning based upon social and psychological experiences. Now I provide the necessary social interaction for my students through literature circles, shared reading responses, and by posting student work in the classroom and hallway. Because my students are a diverse population, it is my responsibility to supply them with texts that reflect and celebrate their cultural backgrounds. It is my responsibility to allow my diverse students opportunities to share their ideas with each other because reading is a social activity and students need to share their unique perspectives. My ultimate goal is that my students read with metacognition—analyzing their thinking as they read in order to find meaning.
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References
Anderson, R.C., & Pearson, P.D. (1984). A schema theoretic view of basic processes in
reading. In P.D. Peason (Ed.), Handbook of reading research (pp.255-291).
White Plans, NY: Longman.
Calfee, R.C., & Patrick, C.L. (1995). Teach our children well. Stanford, CA: Stanford
Alumni Association.
LaBerg, D, & Samuels, S.J. (1974). Toward a theory of automatic information processing
in reading. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 293-323.
Rosenblatt, L., (1978). The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the
literary work. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press.
Rumelhart, D., (1977). Toward an interactive model of reading. In S. Dornic (Ed.).
Attention and performance (vol. 6, pp. 573-603). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Vgotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological
processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.