My dream begins today with a fresh look at what reading means. I happened to pick up the book Comprehension from the Ground Up by Sharon Taberski. As I flipped through the pages, I discovered the answer I've been looking for to help me frame my thinking about reading and what it means to read. I've never quit felt like the 5 pillars captured all the complexity and pleasure involved in reading. In fact they make me sad. Sad because someone believed that you could boil reading and literacy down to a science with a specific set of skills. Reading is much more. Reading also involves passion, commitment, thinking, and heart to engage the mind and I believe to truly understand or...comprehend. I've never felt like comprehension is one of the five pillars, because without the other four pillars, readers can't comprehend...AND...I've seen plenty of students who seem to have the other four pillars but still don't comprehend what they are reading. There must be something else.
So what does this mean? Well, in the ESL world, this validates what I've been thinking about reading and why our ELs struggle when reading is broken down and taught in discrete scientific units - we are forgetting to engage them in meaning making, taking for granted that they already have this skill. They might, but they need to opportunities to process the language in a way they understand. Hence why I'm really excited that oral language and time to talk and write are incorporated in this model. I'm excited because it gives teachers specific ways that ELs can engage in reading and comprehension when they don't have the same level of academic English as native English speaking grade level peers. And it makes sense - of course we know it's easier to understand something when you have background knowledge, when you can talk and write about it, and when you understand the vocabulary related to the topic. This is precisely why our ELs do well when we preview vocabulary, provide them with experiences to build their background knowledge before we engage them in learning the content, and why we find our own thinking is more clear after we talk about a topic with someone or write our thoughts down.
I still have more thinking to do and I will find time to read the rest of the book, but for now I'm left wondering...How can I leverage this information in my work with teachers next year? This is where the dreaming begins...
Taberski, S. (2011). Comprehension from the ground-up: Simplified, sensible instruction for the K-3 reading workshop. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
