Final Personal Model of Reading Theory

Final Personal Model of Reading Theory

What is the correct way to teach reading? Originally, I thought this was a difficult question to answer due to so many teachers teaching their students in different ways. I have to admit, I sometime feel as if my teaching changes from year to year. What I now realize, is there is a correct way to teach students to read. This reading course has helped me to see how effective reading instruction can be, and how to provide instruction to ensure student success for all learners.  My beliefs regarding reading instruction has stayed pretty much the same with the exception of phonics instructions. Through Weaver’s book, Reading, Process, and Practice I was able to see the effectiveness of a Comprehensive Literacy Program on student learning, and recognize my current reading instruction reflects many of its components, as I have always used reading and writing workshop as a way to teach literacy skills to my students.

Teaching reading should be a balanced approach.  Balanced Literacy is a framework designed to help all students learn to read and write effectively. It is a comprehensive program which contains all the important components for students to master reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. Students should be exposed to phonemic awareness, phonics, sight words, reading comprehension, and writing skills. These skills should not be taught in isolation, but instruction of these skills should be balanced to ensure learning is effective. 

In past years, I spent a good amount of time teaching phonics skills in a variety of ways. I would provide phonics instruction whole group and in isolation, as well as providing additional phonics instruction that was embedded in other components of my balanced literacy block. After reading Weaver’s book, I quickly realized my phonics instruction needed to be modified to meet the needs of my students.  I always thought students needed a strong foundation in phonics in order to be a proficient reader, but I quickly learned the truth and began rethinking my phonics instruction. Phonics should be embedded in to the different components of a comprehensive literacy program. Since the majority of my reading instruction is aligned with a comprehensive literacy program, incorporating phonics within my balanced literacy approach should only benefit my students. My phonics instruction will now be taught through reading and writing workshops, instead of the separate block of time devoted to phonics instruction. Phonics is an important understanding to have, but it’s not the key to reading for meaning.

 What I realize after completing the readings from Weaver’s text, is students should not have to recite the phonics rules to show understanding, but should be able to apply the phonics skills through their individual reading and writing activities. In order to be a proficient reader, students don’t need to sound out words in order to gain meaning. In fact, this can be very detrimental to a students’ reading and hinder their comprehension. There are better ways for readers to handle unfamiliar words in text. I now believe that using knowledge on onsets and rimes can be very beneficial to students and their ability to read for meaning. Students become more focused on using “chunking” as a reading strategy to determine unfamiliar words and are able to gain meaning from the text as opposed to sounding out each individual letter sounds.

This reading course has reconfirmed by believes about providing balanced literacy as a way to teach students important reading and writing skills, but it has also helped me redefine and modify my phonics instruction. Teaching reading is definitely a learning process, and I’m sure my reading instruction will continue to change slightly as learn different approaches and strategies to increase student achievement in reading.  I am looking forward to implementing a new way of teaching phonics in my classroom next year. This course has changed the way I look at reading instruction, particular in the area of phonics. My knowledge of reading instruction has grown, and I can’t wait to start putting my new found knowledge into practice.