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

What is Reading?
(And why does it matter what it is?)
Definition #1
Reading is extracting meaning from text.
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.
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)
“Readability”: Let’s test these assumptions with a
passage from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by
Ludwig Wittgenstein
 Count out 100 words from 4.061, 4.063, or 4.0641 (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.
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).
Definition #2:
Reading is constructing meaning from text.
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:
3.
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…
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.
An Example
I PL A Y THE CELLO.
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.
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?
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.
Why Do Veins Pop-out
When Exercising and Is
That Good or Bad?
Scientific American
Contrary to expectations, perhaps,
bulging veins during exercise have
nothing to do with an increase in
either blood volume or pressure in
these vessels. In fact, both are known
to decrease during stepped-up
activity, including exercise.
To explain the prominence of veins during exercise, it
helps to understand the vascular system and its
components. Blood that circulates throughout the
body is pumped from the left ventricle of the heart. It
first enters into the high pressure arteries, where
systolic blood pressure, the highest pressure exerted
there, is recorded around 120 mmHg (millimeters of
mercury), and diastolic pressure, the minimal
pressure exerted in these vessels, is recorded at
around 80 mmHg. (Thus, normal blood pressure is
typically around 120/80 mmHg.)
The blood flows into smaller and smaller branches of arteries called
arterioles. As it continues along, its pressure decreases due to the
resistance of the walls of the arterioles themselves. The blood then enters
the capillaries--the smallest blood vessels--which provide nourishment to,
and remove waste material from, active cells. There are more than one
billion of these in the human body and they are extremely small and thin.
The pressure exerted by the blood as it enters the capillaries is
approximately 30 mmHg.
This pressure decreases even further as the blood completes its
nourishment functions and then leaves the capillaries to flow back toward
the heart via the smallest veins--the venules. The venules combine into
larger and larger veins until they feed into the right atrium of the heart as
the vena cava. By the time blood enters the largest veins, pressure
exerted by the blood stream is only a few mmHg and its return to the
heart is moved along more by muscle activity and breathing than its own
inherent force.
When exercise begins, the heart's rate and strength of contraction increases and
blood is quickly pumped into the arteries. As this is occurring, systolic blood
pressure increases linearly with exercise intensity, rising to nearly 200 mmHg
during high intensity aerobic exercise (and to more than 400 mmHg during weight
lifting). Diastolic pressure, on the other hand, changes very little with aerobic
exercise (although it rises during weight lifting). Simultaneously, the internal
diameters of veins and venules narrow in a process called venoconstriction, forcing
the flow of blood forward to the heart and enhancing their ability to receive blood
coming from the capillaries. Overall, this process helps decrease the pressure in
the venules and veins to at most about five mmHg.
Venous volume and pressure thereby decrease and are thus not the basis for the
bulging. Instead, the process occurring in the capillaries as a result of the rise in
arterial blood pressure during exercise causes plasma fluid otherwise resting in
these tiny tributaries to be forced out through the thin vessel walls and into
compartments surrounding the muscles. This process, known as filtration, causes a
swelling and hardening of the muscle that is noticed during exercise. As a result of
this swelling, cutaneous veins are pushed toward the skin surface, flatten to some
extent, and appear to bulge. Such veins are more visible in persons with less
subcutaneous fat. This bulging is neither good nor bad but simply a result of
normal physiological mechanisms that result from the rise in arterial blood
pressure during exertion.
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).
Here’s a variation: CONTENT DR-TA
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Have students sit together in pairs (or threes). Each student has
their own copy of the reading, but only one sheet of note paper.
Ask students to list on the paper everything they know about a
general topic, e.g., “Shortest Distance from Chicago to Paris”
Ask students to list everything they know about a specific related
topic, e.g., “Geometry of Curved Surfaces”
Ask students to predict what they’ll read about based on their lists.
Have the students read about the Pythagorean theorem and curved
surfaces. As they read, have them mark any predictions they wrote
that they read about with a +, mark inaccurate predictions with a -,
and add new information that they learn
Have a whole-class discussion about what students predicted and
what they learned. Record important facts on the board or butcher
paper for later reference.
Now Let’s Try This:
 Go to: Is Pop Music Evolving, Or Is It Just Getting Louder? (It’s a
link on the course website, http://literacy473.weebly.com . Go
to “Section MS Calendar” and scroll down to tonight’s date.)
 Turn to the people sitting around you and form groups of 3 or
4. Read the first part of the article, online or on the screen.
 Generate a “general” topic for the article;
 Then, generate a more “specific” topic.
 Write these on a small slip of paper and give them to me or
Chris to share at the end of class.
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 dumbdown your curriculum or stop reading challenging
texts when students struggle.
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.