Sounding Out as a Cultural Model

     When a child comes to a word that they are unsure about, what is it that you say to them?

Do you tell them to "sound it out''? Is this really helping them with their reading and learning how to make their own reading strategies. In the article "Sounding Out": A Pervasive Cultural Model of Reading by Catherine Compton-Lilly she talks about the societal belief that reading is "sounding it out". She questions if that is what children really do when they are reading. She says "I find that when beginning readers attempt to "sound out words" they often produce each sound in isolation rather than blending the sounds together" (Compton-Lilly 444). This can be a problem when words have silent letters or complicated letter-sound combinations. Instead of sounding it out we should provide children with other useful strategies when they do not know a word. Have students look at the beginning and ending letters, ask them what makes sense, and what looks right. When reading have them look at the pictures on the page, read to the end of the sentence, and then read the sentence again, and have them look at the word parts. Three cueing systems are particularly helping when helping children to solve an unknown word. The three systems are Meaning (Semantics), Syntax, and Visual (Graphophonics). When looking at the meaning of a story, the children are using the story's background and meanings, and looking at illustrations to solve the unknown word. Ask the child, what makes sense? When looking at the syntax, the child is looking at the grammar. Ask the child, does that sound right? By using the visual information, the child is using the pictures, but the letter/sound combinations instead. Ask the student, does it look right? In my field experience, my 2nd grade teacher uses techniques such as this, instead of saying "sound it out". These strategies help the students to figure out unknown words without using the misguided phrase "sound it out". I think this makes the students better readers. It is important to break away from using the phrase "sound it out" because it is not helpful. As teachers, it is important to work on expanding student's strategies on solving words. We must help them to use letters and sounds in words through strategies that use visual cues and more efficient, then telling them to "sound it out". So the next time you are reading with a child, and they come to a word they are unsure of, ask yourself if you really want to tell them to "sound it out".

Focusing on Children's Strengths

When working on literacy with children it is important to focus on the strengths, instead of "what they can't do". If you as a teacher are focusing on what your students cannot do, are you really helping them learn and develop as literate people? The answer is no, and that is why we need to focus on what a child can do. When we see what a child can do, we get a better understanding of where the child is at in regards to reading and writing. This helps us to know what we can work on with the child, and what particular areas are their strengths, and what areas they may need support in. In Marie Clay's article Running Records she says "Typically children's progress in learning to read is measured by testing the number of letters, or sounds, or words they know" (Clay, 3). So for a child to be considered literate, does this mean that they must know every letter, every sound, and be able to spell every word? NO. It is important that teachers praise students for where they are at. If a child writes                           

                                        "Th kat iz qt." 

does this mean that the child is not literate because they clearly cannot spell the words exactly how they should be? NO. From this sentence, we can see that the child knows that words in a sentence go from left to right, so therefore has directionality. The student is sounding out the words that they are spelling. He/she knows that there is a th /th/ sound in the word "the". In the word cat, he/she knows that there is an "at" at the end producing the /at/ sound. The student knows that there is a period at the end of a sentence. They know that there is capitalization that occurs at the beginning of the sentence. Do you see how easy it is to find the strengths in this simple four word sentence? From this simple sentence we can learn so much about what the child already knows. If we focus so much on every little detail we lose sight of what the child already knows and understands. In Cusumano's article entitled "Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members About Young Children's Writing" it is stated that "in the early stages of learning to write, children don’t feel constrained by conventions as adults do, and they experiment with size, shape, and direction of letters" (p.12). This speaks true to focusing on what children can do. They may not know every single rule like adults do because they are not experts yet. They are just figuring themselves out as readers and writers. They experiment with different ways of making meaning and producing. To give them proper opportunities for growth and to further develop as readers as readers, don't focus on what they can't do, focus on what they can. 

Comprehension

As children read, their brains make sense of the text. By doing so, they make connections, formulate questions, visualize what they read, draw inferences, critique the text, and much more. The questions formulated throughout Chapter 8 in Catching Readers were: Is strategy instruction necessary for every student in the classroom? and Does the child need to be able to name which strategy helped him/her to comprehend what they read? The answer is that while comprehension strategy instruction has a place in schools, it is not necessary for every child to have lengthy teaching over comprehension strategies. A child also does not have to be able to name a strategy that they used to comprehend text. Throughout the text, they talked about how asking a child to explain what he/she is thinking actually slows down their thinking process. A student that would benefit from comprehension strategy teaching is the struggling reader who cannot engage with the text, or is just memorizing lines in case asked what the text said. If a struggling reader is taught the kinds of strategies that successful readers use, they could add their own spin to those strategies and find a way to make meaningful connections to text. The successful readers should also be provided with ways to be further challenged so that they do not become bored with the readings that are too easy for them, and assignments that provoke creativity. Children are already doing a lot of the comprehension strategies in their head without even realizing that they are doing it. If they can make meaningful connections to texts, we do not need them to explain every little line of thought. When teaching comprehension, children should be taught to have their own thoughts about reading. It is their job to create meaning, formulate questions, visualize, and make inferences. Comprehension is all about thinking, and every student is capable of that. 

Literacy in my Community

Literacy is all around us. It is not only in our homes, and schools, but in the community we live in. Literacy can be found in signs, stores, sidewalks, sides of buildings etc., Literacy is not just reading books, and writing with pen and paper. Literacy can be found on street signs, telling you where you are going. It can be found in grocery stores, on advertisements, and food labels. It can be found on the sidewalks, where there is street art, such as graffiti. Literacy can be anything that helps you read or invokes a creative response. You should care about the types of literacy that can be found in your community because they say a lot about the people who took the time to create them. You can tell a lot about people from what they read and write. Literacy helps you gain insight into the lives of others and yourself.