Thursday December 4, 2008 6:30 am Lethbridge

Wolf, M. (2007). Proust and the Squid.

Part II: How the Brain Learns to Read Over Time

Chapter 5. The "Natural History" of Reading development: Connecting the Parts of the Young Reading Brain

The first activity this morning was to see if I could identify the 6 major dimensions of reading activity and the 5 levels of reading ability. I should be able to do this without much difficulty now. 6 Dimensions of Reading Activity orthographic - recognizing written symbols phonological - being able to relate symbols to sounds morphological - making changes to words and phrases syntactic - rules of grammar semantic - understanding pragmatic - social and cultural usage 5 Levels of Reading Ability pre-reading - being exposed and immersed in language environments novice - relating symbols to speech decoding - learning the basic rules of language fluent - smooth, fast and understanding expert - flexible, meta-cognitive Major Regions of the Brain prefrontal - memory temporal - sound/language occipital - visual parietal - And yes, I have saved this page twice in the process of creating this box. Now to begin making notes with the third bullet item under Decoding Reader.

(3) Decoding Reader

• "If you listen to children in the decoding reader phase, you will 'hear' the difference. ... the sound of a smoother, more confident reader on the verge of becoming fluent. [p. 126 - 127]
  
  
• "In this phase of semi-fluency, readers need to add at least 3,000 words to what they can decode, making the thirty-seven common letter patterns learned earlier are no longer enough." [p. 127 -128]

  Where did 37 come from? What are these patterns?

• "For word-rich children, old words become automatic, and new words come flying in, both from the child's sheer exposure to them and from his or her figuring out how to derive the meanings and functions of new words from new contexts. These readers are poised for fluent reading." [p. 129]
  
  
• "If vocabulary doesn't develop, partially known words don't become known, and new grammatical constructions are not learned. Fluent word recognition is significantly propelled by both vocabularay and grammatical knowledge." [p. 129]
  
  
• "With each step forward in reading and spelling, children tacitly learn a great deal about what's inside a word - that is, the stems, roots, prefixes, and suffixes that make up the morphemes of our language." [p. 129]
  
  
• "And they begin to see that many words share common orthographically displayed roots that convey related meanings despite different pronunciations (e.g., sign, ... signature). But children too rarely receive explicit instruction in this second half of what makes Englsih a "morphophonemic" writing system." [p. 130]

(4) Fluent Reader

• "Fluency is not a matter of speed; it is a matter of being able to utilize all the special knowledge a child has about a word - its letters, letter patterns, meanings, grammatical functions, roots, and endings ... Everything about a word contributes to how fast it can be read." [p. 130 - 131]
  
  
• "The point of becoming fluent, therefore, is to read - really read - and understand." [p. 131]
  
  
• "After all the letters and decoding rules are learned, ... after the various comprehension processes are beginning to be deployed, the elecitation of feelings can bring children into a life-long, head-on love affair with reading ... " [p. 133]

Chapter 6. The Unending story of Reading Development

• "Recent reports from the National Reading Panel and the 'nation's report cards' indicate that 30 to 40 percent of children in the fourth grade do not become fully fluent readers with adequate comprehension. This is a devastating figure, made even worse by the fact that teachers, textbook authors, and indeed the entire school system have different expectations for students from grade 4 on." [p. 135]
  
  
• "Through no fault of their own, most fourth-grade teachers never take a course in teaching reading to children who have not acquired fluency." [p. 135]

  Faculties of Education and in-service courses should exist everywhere.

• "Comprehension processes grow impressively in such places as these [fantasy & adventure stories], where children learn to connect prior knowledge, predict dire or good consequences, draw inferences form every danger-filled corner, monitor gaps in their understanding, and interpret how each new clue, revelation, or added piece of knowledge changes what they know." [p. 138]
  
  
• "From the start, young middle-school readers have to learn how to think in a new way ... " [p. 139]
  
  
• "The two greatest aids to fluent comprehension are explicit instruction by a child's teachers in major content areas and the child's own desire to read." [p. 139]
  
  
• "... in reciprocal teaching ... teachers explicitly help students learn to question what they don't understand, summarize the content, identify key issues, clarify, and predict and infer what happens next." [p. 139]

  This would make an excellent check-list.

• "Comprehension emerges out of all the cognitive, linguistic, emotional, social and instructional factors in the child's prior development ..." [p. 139]

  Therefore we should include activities that encompass all of these components, although not necessarily all at the same time.

• "The fluent reading brain hs a cortical jouney of its own to make. Not only does it expand its ability to decode and understand; it feels more than ever before." [p. 140]

(5) Expert Reader

• "The degree to which expert reading changes over the course of our adult lives depends largely on what we read and how we read it." [p, 156]

  This brings to mind a saying I have had for over 30 years: You can never read the same book twice. (Nor can you make the same set of notes!)

Tags: psychology, reading