Weaver’s first two chapters focus
on approaches to literacy and how children establish their motivation for
reading. When learning to read, children are heavily influenced by how the
teachers teach reading, which shapes how a child views reading and writing.
There are two main approaches to literacy. The skills approach and the
sociopsycholinguistic approach both represent two methods for teaching, both
with a different focus.
The skills approach is rooted in
the belief that instruction should be heavily based off phonemes. This approach
focuses on teaching letter-sound correspondences, teaching children to decode
words, patterns for identifying words, and often puts little emphasis on
understanding the meaning of the text. This approach is more of a bottom-up
model in which children begin with phonemic awareness, then add letter sounds,
recognize words, and then arrive at the meaning. This type of approach also
emphasizes fluency. How quickly and accurately can the student read? Often
times when students are reading for speed, they don’t focus on the meaning of
the text, but rather how many words per minute they have accomplished. This is
one of the downfalls with this particular approach.
The sociopsycholinguistic approach
works the opposite way. This approach would be considered a top-down theory.
Understanding the meaning is the main goal for children being taught with this
approach. Children start by understanding the meaning before going into
recognizing words, adding letter sounds, and having phonemic awareness. How can
a child gain meaning from a text if they can’t read the words? In order to gain
meaning, the reader is encouraged to use background knowledge, existing
schemas, context clues, and visual aids that might be provided. We read in
order to gain meaning from a text, which is why this approach sounds like the
better alternative to me. However, a child’s phonemic awareness is an excellent
indicator of future success in reading. Because I understand the importance of
phonemic awareness and phonics, I believe there needs to be a balance. I would
focus more heavily on teaching meaning, while still incorporating lessons in
phonemic awareness and word recognition.
I think that we both agree in the way that the sociopsycholiguistic approach is the most affective in the classroom. I am curious to get my new students in August to truly assess their background knowledge. Why are we spending so much time focusing on phonics and decoding and fluency when really the students need help putting the pieces together to see the larger picture. I, too, rely on my past experiences when reading and when I read about this approach I could see the positive effects it has on both my reading and hopefully my own students.
ReplyDeleteI feel from my experiences most children are taught the skills approach method to reading. So much focus is on fluency and phonics that students regret to comprehend what they are reading. I agree with your thought that there should be a balance of phonemic awareness and phonics that includes schemas, context, and meaning. The sociopsycholinguistic approach views the whole pictures and uses all of these factors to teach children to fully understand what they are reading.
ReplyDeleteI agree that while one approach is not better than the other, the comprehensive approach should have a heavier focus in the classroom while the skills approach is still included in lessons. Teaching top-down gives our students a chance to constantly be making connections and finding enjoyment in reading. Teaching bottom-up gives our students a chance to be successful in reading, but they may not chose to read as often.
ReplyDeleteI saw on your About Me that you graduated from Auburn undergrad as well! I would be curious to see what we have in common from our experiences there.
I totally agree with you that students learning to read need a balance of both comprehension and phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is a very important skill young readers need to begin their first in reading. While comprehension is extremely important as well, all subjects do work on reading comprehension. Especially as the student gets older, comprehension is the main skill being focused on and phonics is not taught.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we need to work on teaching both forms. In Kindergarten we work on teaching those letter sounds and we drill and drill them to see if they know the sounds and if they can blend them together but the students are not able to tell me anything about what they are reading they are too focused on sounding out those words correctly.
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