My comments on Chapter 5,6, and 7

Well first of all these readings are certainly not something that can be read once. Rather I think I will need to read it again, again and then again. This book is really helping me make sense of much of what I have observed and practiced in our language area of my pre-school class for the last several years. It was interesting to learn that we still need to remain mindful of Piaget's theory regarding cognitive development when developing our lesson plans in order that we can sucessfully meet the needs of each inidividual learner. I guess if we use these theories as a foundation for how we teach instead of just as isolated theories then perhaps the theories can better serve us and the students that we are supoosed to be serving.

I could not help but laugh as I read about the Maturation Theory which was very much in keeping with the idea that "children should be seen and not heard." This was how my parents had often explained the nature of their relationships with those around them as they were growing up. They were to remain silent and stay out of the way and if they did not there were consequences. CLearly this is a theory foreign to us today as a society that has just come out of the "century of the child" with great focus on how to improve the lives of children everywhere through education and health reform. It is interesting to specualte how society may have been somewhat different if in fact educators and parents had not supported the beleif that literacy instruction should not be taught before the age of six. Fortunately, the Theory of Literacy was developed and an understanding that children could not be harmed by being taught to read at an earlier age.

While I agree with much of Holdaway's theory, that the child's environment needs to be literary rich with labels about the classroom, and a great deal of interaction with their peers and parents both verbally and through reading with adults, I still have problems with associating the word natural to reading. I don't know if I am wrong, however the dictionary meaning for natural is "growing spontaneously, without being planted or tended by human hand or arising easily or spontaneously" This being said, I do not agree with Holdaway's description of literacy development as natural. However, I am going off on a tangent and I do not think it is necessary, so back to the theory blog.

I can fully support the Stage Model Theroy in that I completely agree with Stahl and Murray that "word recognition goes through three stages as Ehri called "visual cue reading, phonetic cue reading, and phonological cue reading." I have witnessed this in practice with children as young as 3 to 4 yeas of age and agree that this most reflects the development of literacy in young readers. I recall as a child being able to recognize the Pathmark sign and Sears sign each and every time we passed it on our daily walk. When we travelled on the subways that were elevated outside in the city, I was able to recognize these same words throughout all the boroughs and on all the advertisements. I certainly was in no manner able to read at that time,but I thought I could because I knew those words. Similarly, our family found it humorous when our three year old could recogize the word Starbucks everywhere in the tri-state area.

I also agree with the Emergent Literacy Theory that states that a child's development in listening, speech, reading, and writing are all interrelated and so literacy development starts at birth and is a contiuing process. I do not know if I would have agreed with this two weeks ago, but as I read further and understand wach theory, I think there is a strong correlation between all of these and so yes literacy growth probably does begin at birth.Similarly, I can say without any reservation that the family literacy theory is important to recognize and understand as a teacher trying to make a connection with children from a variety of backgrounds.

I think even more interesting than the theories in this chapter were the suggestions made such as giving parents information about how to engage their children in developing literacy, developing an instruction approach emphasizing visual and auditory readiness along with phonics instruction. More specifically, I found the activites suggested extremely helpful and something I think I would like to employ in our class.

As I read the socio-cultural and socio-linguistic theories I found myself going back again to the thoughts I had when I read the first chapters of this book that as a teacher I do not think that I can possibly associate myself with only one theory as I approach teaching. I think both the socio-cultural and socio lingusitic throies are key to understaniding the child as an individual learner. These theories somewhat overlap with the family literacy theory and also seem somewhat part of the foundation of Vytgotsky's Social Constructivisim theory. As a future teacher of an inclusion class I think the zone of Proximal development is critical to understand before attempting to teach any child.How can we teach without understanding what the child knows and what they do not know. It is only with this information that a teacher can make the learning process an optimal one for all her students. I loved the term scaffolding. When you think about the support necessary for the constuction of a reader it really is appropriate to call the assistance scaffolding, because it encompaases all the elements of support needed to build the reader.

While I liked how the Automatic Information Processing Method described reading as a skill that is learned by building up from the bottom I am not sure I agreed with its criticism of the problems associated with word decoding. Yes decoding may slow down the process and at times derail the process, but with the right guidance I think it is still very necessary to place emphasis on decoding.

In conclusion, I think I now need to reread all of this information again.