Module 2: Reading Reflection

With this quote, the majority of the public believes that if individuals were to read word for word of everything on a page, then they would be able to convey an author’s message or purpose for the reading. Reading is not an exact process in that it takes both syntactic clues as well as semantic clues to gather meaning from a text.

I agree with Harper and Kilarr in that society’s outlook on reading is inaccurate in that readers use their own experience as well as schemas to help identify words or convey meaning from the author’s text. Depending on someone’s culture and background, he/ she can infer a text different to an individual who comes from a different background. I agree with Harper and Kilarr in that reading is not “an exact process.” While observing students during read alouds, I have noticed that although they may not read every single word correct in the sentence, they are still able to gain meaning from the passage. Weaver states that a reader is still able to gather meaning from a reading even if certain words were mispronounced.  Often time’s if a particular sentence is not clear, then either the preceding sentence or the following sentence will provide enough context clues for the reader to gather a better meaning.

Throughout my student teaching, I found that when students previously developed background knowledge of a particular topic, they were able to connect and comprehend the reading more proficiently than someone who was unaware of the topic. For example, one of my third grade boys loved to learn about nature and different kinds of plants. Therefore he had more background knowledge on this topic before reading the text that dealt with plants. According to Weaver, “context within the selection must be supplemented by personal context, the totality of one’s knowledge and experience.” However the other students who had neither an interest in plants or prior experience had to use “everything they knew to in order to understand unfamiliar words in context in order to learn new vocabulary through reading” (Weaver, 2002, p. 45). I have been able to connect the reading of the text to when my third graders were learning new vocabulary. It took my students several different encounters and different teaching approaches for them to establish a definite meaning of the word.

When reading with small groups of students each day, I noticed that several of my students often had miscues that would not change the meaning of the text. Just because they were not reading the passage word for word did not mean that they were misinterpreting the text. Several miscues developed when students read pronouns and simple function words, which occurred because they were “reading to construct meaning, rather than identify words” (Weaver, 2002, p. 62). After working with my third grade students I too found that it is not “important not to assess a reader’s strengths and strategies based on standardized test scores or how smoothly the person reads aloud.” It is important when observing students to see how the miscues fit into the context of the sentence and how the reader comprehends the text. Weaver states that the goal of reading instruction “ should not be the accurate identification of every word, but rather the efficient use of reading strategies in order to construct meaning.” This goes hand in hand with Harper and Kilarr’s view that reading is not an exact process. After reading chapters 3 & 4 of Weaver’s text as well as having personal experience in the classroom, I agree even more with Harper and Kilarr.