The
most important thing for teachers to be aware of is that students learn best
through a whole-to-part literacy structure. Constance Weaver explains it
perfectly in Reading Process &
Practice when she states,
“As children have more and more
experience with print, development proceeds not from part to whole, but from
whole to part: from being read to, to being able to read; from an understanding
that print represents speech to being able to match spoken words to print
words; from perceiving print words as whole units to being able to analyze
print words into units that represent onsets and rimes” (2002, p.369).
Whole-to-part literacy
most nearly means not teaching individual rules or strategies, but teaching
them through reading and writing so that the students can see them in their
appropriate contextual environment. We can accomplish this through a
comprehensive literacy program with reading and writing workshops.
In
a comprehensive literacy approach “teachers and students attend to
skill-related knowledge like phonics by drawing examples from texts being read
and relating the skills back to their reading. [While] teachers…help children
master letter formation, spelling patterns, and punctuation when the children
use writing as a means of expressing themselves, communicating and coming to
know and understand new concepts and experiences” (Weaver, 2002, p.3).
Therefore, reading and writing need to be taught in conjunction with one
another in order to further the students’ understanding of particular concepts.
As started in Breaking Ground: Teachers
Relate Reading and Writing in the Elementary School, “Reading and writing
would be allowed to flow and develop in an interactive process, each supporting
and enhancing the other. [Graves] had watched the strong effect of writing
process on children’s reading in previous years and marveled. The two processes
seemed to go together naturally” (Graves, 1985, p.16).
The more children are able to participate in reading
experiences the stronger their reading and writing is going to get. First, the
teacher needs to demonstrate various reading and writing strategies rather than
simply explaining them and expecting the students to fully understand. This
quote from Inside Writing: How to Teach
the Details of Craft explains it perfectly:
“It is unheard of for a math teacher
not to show the art of solving problems on the chalkboard. An artist paints
with his class, a science teacher illustrates the art of investigation and
documentation, and a coach shows how she spreads her fingers to control a
basketball. Good teaching means demonstrating the decisions and skills required
to participate in the field of study or endeavor being taught” (Graves &
Kittle, 2005, p. 1).
Through
read-alouds and shared reading, the students will be able to hear and see the
print on the page, as well as listen to the teacher orally go through different
reading strategies. When the students see the teacher using these strategies
and what they accomplish, they will begin to understand their importance in
comprehension. The same goes for writing; teachers can allow students to
experience the writing process through write-alouds and shared writing. With
this strategy, the students will be able to see a piece of work from conception
to brainstorming to final publication. These activities will also build student
background knowledge of various topics. Background knowledge is vital to
fluency and comprehension, as well as the writing process because if students
have never heard of something how can they be expected to read or write about
it. They will also build student’s word familiarity because the students will
be getting more and more exposure to various types of words.
Once the students have seen the
reading and writing process, it is time for them to try it on their own through
guided reading/writing, sustained reading/writing. This way the students can
take what they have learned through demonstration and begin to read and write
on their own. Because students had a lot of exposure to different types of
words through teacher-lead activities, they will be able to figure out
unfamiliar words through analogy, in order words comparing the unknown word to
familiar words in order to figure out its pronunciation. This is when students
begin to segment words into recognizable “chunks” such as syllables or onsets
and rimes. However, teacher scaffolding
and mini-lessons do not stop here- teachers need to keep in constant contact
with students through reading/writing conferences. These conferences are used
to check on the student’s progress and see if they are having any troubles with
any of the strategies or content. This is the time where teachers can resolve
any issues with the students individually.
With that said, through a
whole-to-part comprehensive literacy approach students are more apt to gain
more knowledge and understanding through reading and writing. Students learn
more naturally through whole-to-part compared to part-to-whole because they are
able to use and build upon the surrounding context. “Evidence suggest that many
emergent and less proficient readers develop phonics knowledge most readily by
learning whole words and deriving phonics knowledge from them, rather than by
learning phonics first” (Weaver, 2002, p.57). The less time students focus on
“decoding” words through phoneme-grapheme relationships, the more time they
will be able to spend on comprehending the given passage.
Resources
Graves,
D. (1985). Breaking ground:
Teachers relate reading and writing in the elementary schools. New
Hampshire : Heinemann.
Weaver, C. (2002). Reading process and practice.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.
