The Reading Process – The reading process involves a series of 5 stages during which the readers comprehend the text. The goal is comprehension, understanding text, and being able to use it for the intended purposes. This process involves using phonemic awareness and phonics, word identification, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. They also use the phonological system to assist with reading and understanding.
Phonemic Awareness – The ability to manipulate the sounds in words orally.
Phonics – Predictable relationships between phonemes and graphemes. The relationship between a sound and the letter(s) representing it is also called the phoneme-grapheme correspondence.
Word Identification – Strategies students use to decode words. Students also recognize common and high frequency word automatically and use phonics and word parts to decode unfamiliar words.
Fluency – Reading quickly, smoothly, and with expression. Students become fluent readers once they can recognize most words automatically. This also frees up their cognitive resources for comprehension instead of decoding words.
Vocabulary – The meaning of words students are reading. Knowing the meaning of words helps students comprehend better because it is difficult to understand the text when the words don’t make sense.
Comprehension – The process of constructing meaning using both the author’s text and the reader’s knowledge for a specific purpose. To understand what they are reading, students use a combination of reader and text factors. They predict, connect, monitor, and repair as well as using their knowledge of genres, patterns, and literary devices.
The Five Stages of the Reading Process:
Stage 1: Prereading
- Students active or build background knowledge and related vocabulary
- Think about the genre for a better understanding
- Set purposes
- Introduce key academic vocabulary words
- Make predictions about characters and events
- And preview the text by flipping pages and looking at headlines
Background Knowledge – General and specific knowledge that the student already knows. General knowledge or world knowledge is what they students have acquired through life experiences and specific knowledge is literary knowledge, or what students need to read and comprehend a text.
Stage 2: Reading
- Read independently or with a partner
- Reading with classmates using shared or guided reading
- Listen to the teacher read aloud
- Read the entire text or specific sections depending on the purpose
- Apply reading strategies and skills
- Examine illustrations, charts, and diagrams
Interactive Read-Aloud – During interactive read alouds teachers read books that are developmentally appropriate but written above students’ reading levels. And, even though the teacher is reading the students are still being actively engaged through questioning, making predictions, identifying ideas, and making connections. Read-alouds are important because they benefit students of all ages.
Shared Reading – During shared reading, the teacher will read a book that the students cannot read independently on their own while the students follow along with their own copy. The teacher models how the students should read and at what pace. After the teacher reads the book or story multiple times, the students can begin to join in the reading as well.
Guided Reading – These are 25-30 minute lessons with four or five students who read at the same level. The students do the reading themselves and they use books that the students can read with 90-94% accuracy. The teacher will observe each of the students for a few minutes to check their fluency skills among other things as well as their attempts to identity words and solve reading problems. These observations can be helpful for teachers to plan future lessons as well as interventions.
Stage 3: Responding
- Write in reading logs
- Participate in grand conversations or other discussions
In stage 3, students are responding to their readings by writing in reading logs and participating in classroom discussions. Reading logs are used by students to keep track of what they are thinking and feeling throughout readings. Grand conversations are a part of discussions as well. Students will talk with their classmates about stories and poems they have read and may explain what they liked/didn’t like about a text as well as personal reactions.
Stage 4: Exploring
- Reread all or part of the text
- Learn new vocabulary words
- Participate in minilessons
- Examine genre, other text features, or the writer’s craft
- Learn about the author
- Collect memorable quotes
In this stage, students will go back and reread their text to examine it more analytically. This stage is more teacher led than others. Many times the teacher will ask the students questions like: What was the author’s purpose? What were the main ideas and structural elements? And How appropriate was their word choice and sentence structure?
Word Wall – This one is quite straight forward. It is a wall full of important words posted on it in the classroom. Students can refer to it when they write and use the words for different activities. A word wall is especially important when students are learning new vocabulary throughout the year. Students can even add words to the word wall for future situations. The word wall can also significantly cut back on student interruptions from them not knowing how to spell several words. Instead of raising their hand to ask how a word is spelled or interrupting, they can now check the word wall first.
Word Sorts – A word sort is a simple activity where individuals or groups of students have a list of words in which they need to identify the meanings. They then have to sort the list of words into collections or categories of words with similar features.
Mini lessons – These are short lessons in which concepts, procedures, strategies, and skills are taught. They shouldn’t be more than 10 minutes long. They are to introduce a topic and make connections between the topic and previous selections or ideas.
Stage 5: Applying
- Construct projects
- Read related books
- Use information in thematic units
- Reflect on the reading experience
In stage 5, students are now applying what they have learned and creating projects to show competency and comprehension. They extend their comprehension, reflect on their understanding, and value the reading experience in this final stage.
Readers Theatre – During a readers theatre, students perform an excerpt from a book they have read. They will usually act it out in front of the class as well.
The Writing Process:
Simply stated, the writing process is a series of 5 stages that describe what students think about and what students do as they write. However, the stages are not linear, and they involve recuring cycles. They are numbered to help when identifying writing activities.
The Five Stages of the Writing Process:
Stage 1: Prewriting
- Choose a topic
- Consider the purpose
- Identify the genre
- Engage in rehearsal activities to gather ideas
- Use a graphic organizer to organize ideas
Stage 2: Drafting
- Write a rough draft
- Use wide spacing to leave room for revising
- Emphasize ideas rather than mechanical correctness
- Mark the writing as a “rough draft”
Stage 3: Revising
- Reread the rough draft
- Participate in revising groups
- Work at one or more revising centers
- Make substantive changes that reflect classmates’ feedback
- Conference with the teacher
Stage 4: Editing
- Proofread the revised rough draft with a partner
- Work at one or more editing centers
- Correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar errors
- Conference with the teacher
Stage 5: Publishing
- Format the composition
- Make the final copy
- Share the writing with an appropriate audience
Stage 1: Prewriting
Simply stated, prewriting is the “getting ready to write stage.” This is where students choose a topic, consider purpose and genre, and gather and organize ideas. Students should choose their own topics for writing so that their more engaged, but sometimes teachers provide the topics. Then students should consider the purpose like whether their writing is to entertain, inform, or persuade. Because different genres have varying distinctions, teachers should avoid calling all writings “stories.” Students finally gather and organize ideas during the prewriting stage. They will often draw pictures, brainstorm lists of words, read books, do internet research, and talk about ideas with classmates.
Stage 2: Drafting
This stage is where students get their ideas down on paper or a computer writing program and write a first draft of their composition. These drafts are usually messy, and students will often skip every other line when writing leaving room for corrections. Using computer to compose rough drafts, polish their writing, and print out final copies has many benefits as well. Students are often more motivated, write longer pieces, their writing looks neater, and they tend to use spell-check programs to correct misspelled words.
Stage 3: Revising
During this stage, writers refine and revise their ideas in their compositions. Revision isn’t polishing, however. It’s adding, substituting, deleting, and rearranging material. Revisions also consist of three activities: rereading through a rough draft, sharing the rough draft in a revising group, and revising on the basis of feedback. When rereading through a rough draft students will make changes and place question marks by sections that may or do need work and ask for help with these spots in their revising groups. They then share their compositions with their revising group while the revising group suggests possible revisions. Next the students make the changes to their works. There are four types of changes to their rough drafts: additions, substitutions, deletions, and moves. Lastly, the students visit revision centers the teacher has set up where they can either talk with their classmate/s about the ideas in their rough draft, examine the organization of their writing, consider their word choice, or check that they’ve included all required components in the composition. Teachers will usually setup a checklist of revising and editing center options for their students like looking at word choice, using graphic organizers, highlighting, sentence combining, spelling, homophones, punctuation, capitalization, and sentences.
Stage 4: Editing
This editing stage involves putting the piece of writing into its final form. After the focus has changed from the content of the writing to the editing and mechanics students polish their writing by correcting spelling mistakes and other mechanical errors. Some of these involve capitalization, punctuation, spelling, sentence structure, usage, and formatting considerations specifically for poems, scripts, letters and other writing genres. Then the students move through two other activities: proofreading to locate errors and correcting the errors they find. Proofreading is a unique type of reading in which students read word by word to hunt for errors rather than reading for meaning. This can be difficult even for experienced readers so teacher modeling and demonstrating is crucial. After proofreading students then attempt correct any errors they find, but they may need assistance from other students, teachers, or even dictionaries.
Stage 5: Publishing
The final stage of the writing process is publishing. In this stage students bring their writing to life by creating final copies and sharing them, often orally, with others. When they share their writing with real audiences of classmates, teachers, parents, and community members, students think of themselves and real authors. This is a very powerful motivator for students to continue writing and improve upon their quality. Some ways students can publish and share their writings are by making books, publishing their writings online, reading to parents and siblings, displaying their writing on posters or bulletin boards, and displays at school.
Reading and Writing Strategies – Reading and writing are complex, thoughtful processes that involves both strategies and skills. Strategies represent the thinking that students do as they read and write while skills are quick automatic behaviors that don’t require any thought. Strategies are deliberate, goal-directed actions. Students exercise control in choosing appropriate strategies, using them effectively and monitoring their effectiveness, and these strategies are linked to motivation as well. In contrast, skills are automatic actions with an emphasis on effortless and accurate use.
Here are several reading strategies students can use throughout the reading process that highlight the kinds of thinking students engage in:
- Decoding Strategies – Students use strategies such as phonics and morphemic analysis to identify unfamiliar words
- Word-Learning Strategies – Students apply strategies such as analyzing word parts to figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words
- Comprehension Strategies – Students use strategies such as predicting, drawing inferences, and visualizing to understand what they’re reading
- Study Strategies – Students apply strategies such as taking notes and questioning to learn information when they’re reading content area books
Here are several writing strategies students can use throughout the writing process to purposefully draft and refine their writing.
- Prewriting Strategies – Students use prewriting strategies like organizing to develop ideas before beginning to write
- Drafting Strategies – Students apply drafting strategies like narrowing the topic and providing examples to focus on ideas while writing the first draft
- Revising Strategies – Students use revising strategies like detecting problems, elaborating ideas, and combing sentences to communicate their ideas more effectively
- Editing Strategies – Students apply strategies like proofreading to identify and correct spelling and other mechanical errors
- Publishing Strategies – Students use strategies like designing the layout to prepare their final copings and share them with classmates and other authentic audiences
Videos
Phonological Awareness and Phonics – https://youtu.be/yS46jqYfZDg
Right at the beginning the presenter describes how phonological awareness is speech awareness. She also mentions that students need to be aware that speech can be broken up into smaller pieces like sound components. These components can then be broken down into words, words into syllables and syllables can be broken up to individual components.
Difference Between Phonemic Awareness and Phonics – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyeFoJkbqOo
This video shows us a great example of a phonemic awareness and phonics lesson where the students would break down words into individual sounds and speak aloud the individual sounds. They were also working on phonics by looking at the letters and answering the questions. They even substituted during the exercise which is another great lesson for participating students
How I Would Use This In My Classroom
One of the biggest ideas the stood out to me this chapter was the fact that prewriting has probably been the most neglected stage in the writing process and that students should be spending 70% of their writing time prewriting. This prewriting stage is something that I have struggled personally with for a very long time. I would either not plan enough for my writings and work on the outline or rough draft as I go or I would plan too much and make notes on everything before even getting started. Because that is what I struggle/ed with and have observed others struggling as well, I would like to focus on that with my students.
I also liked the part about the writing genres. I think I would like to spend a bit of time on that with my students as well. I feel like I may have missed some of those important parts of learning the writing process and don’t want my students to miss out on that either.
One last bit of super useful information is about all the different types of reading there is to do with students. When it comes to reading aloud to students, shared reading, guided reading, partner reading, and independent reading, they each have their strengths and weaknesses. Thoroughly understanding these will help teachers become more effect. I also thought it was interesting to think about some of those different types of readings and how they would be used in the classroom. For example, would some of these work better in smaller classrooms or during intervention time?
Travis Davis ENGED 275 