The Writing Process Part 2

We had an interesting discussion about the very first things we must do in order to prepare for reading. We need to emotionally prepare ourselves to read. It is important to consider the how we must clear our minds, block out distractive sounds, and settle our bodies before we can even begin to read.

Once you have establish your readiness to read, we use our orientation skills and long term memory of where to start to locate the top left hand corner of the page.

From here, we begin to identify the letters on the first word.  We decode the letters by applying our background knowledge of the letters, their sounds, and how they blend together with other letters. After we read a word, she try to apply meaning to it if we have memory of that word. If not, we are left trying to apply meaning, which may not happened as prior knowledge may not exist.

Below is the chart Ashley and I started yesterday. After Barbara's 36 step explanation of the reading process we realize that we missed a lot if steps!

Taking a look at the individual brain functions really showed me how many steps are necessary to do simple tasks and how there is so much room for error that may result in a difficulty. We assume that people are capable of the simplest task when in fact, someone might suffer from a small disfunction that might not allow them to see a small spot on a page, rendering them incapable of see all of the words on a page and unable to read successfully. The smallest disruption in a particular brain function can change the outcome of reading even if all other functions work properly.

This is certainly something to consider when teaching students to read. I can't help but reflect on my grade 1 students from this past year. Every time they made a small mistake ( saying 'le' instead of 'la') I would assume they weren't paying close enough attention to the letters. Wrong! There are probably numerous reasons as to why my students commonly made this error and upon reflection on the process of reading I can't help but think that maybe it was an engagement problem.