Writer's Notebook Post #9

Second to last post for the course... We're in the home stretch! :)

I'd like to focus today's post on the text Content Area Reading & Writing: Fostering Literacies in Middle and High School Cultures (Second Edition) by Norman Unrau (2008).

Chapter 3 of this text is entitled "Inside the Meaning Construction Zone: Readers Reading", and it mostly focuses on developing good reading habits through practice. It also refutes several "Myths of Good Readers" that a lot of students believe. But, we instructors know that most educational myths are often untrue.

As a graduate student of 24 years of age, I would consider myself to be a strong reader. No, I do not know and recognize every word I encounter in the texts I read (especially graduate level texts). Far from it. But, I have learned through my high school and post-secondary education experiences to monitor my own comprehension and use my metacognitive skills to increase my comprehension. For example, I write summaries in the margins of difficult articles and texts that I read so that I can glean some of the main points by skimming the margins. Additionally, I either write questions into the margins of the text when I don't understand, or if it's a library or a friend's copy, I will use Post-It notes to write my questions into the text. These self-monitoring strategies to aid my comprehension demonstrate that I am a relatively sophisticated reader.

One "Myth of a Good Reader" that I'd like to discuss is the idea that "Good readers never look back". I completely disagree w/ this statement, as I oftentimes look back into the text- and I would consider myself to be a good-- or even great-- reader. In fact, this statement goes in direct opposition to what we teach our students. In this standardized testing age where we're constantly preparing our students for the OAT (Ohio Achievement Test), we encourage our students to look back at the passage for evidence and reasoning to support their answers (whether they're multiple choice, short answer, or extended response). I think that good readers analyze what they've read previously, and this helps them draw conclusions, make predictions, and make inferences. Looking back at the text during a standardized assessment is also a surefire technique to help them improve their scores.

I also disagree with the statement that good readers read quickly and take in a lot of text at one time. While automaticity and fluency are critically important to reading success, speed reading is not proven to increase a student's comprehension. Sometimes, good readers need to go slowly and read word-by-word to have the best comprehension possible. Also, good readers may take notes, write questions into the text, or spend time looking up unfamiliar vocabulary... and this would render their reading process slower as well.

I think that at the lower levels, our students absolutely need to master fluency and automaticity in reading (and especially when reading silently) so that they can read all of the texts presented to them in class. But, as children progress through school, I absolutely believe that the emphasis needs to shift towards comprehension self-monitoring strategies (and that students need to already possess automaticity and fluency).