Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

Teacher Bobbi In this course, the Psychological Processes of Reading, many of my notions of what the brain does while it reads were solidified. Prior to this course, I had studied several theories of reading, but this course helped me to synthesize those, to understand their historical development, and to see that several reading theories, although partially disproven, still hold value to the researcher and the reading teacher. Furthermore, I began to understand reading comprehension with more depth. As any serious student of reading knows, there are two important reading theories regarding attention and automaticity. LaBerge and Samuels (1994;1974) first posited that reading is like playing a musical instrument or a sport: that you overlearn the lower processes (like reading the music or memorizing the plays) so that the brain will be able to focus on the more difficult aspects of the activity (playing the music or executing the play). In reading, Automaticity Theory explains t...

Beck and McKeown's   "Increasing Young Low-Income Children’s Oral Vocabulary Repertoires through Rich and Focused Instruction" (2007) details 2 studies that show the importance of rich and extended vocabulary instruction for students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds. Study 1 Research Question.   In study 1, the research question wa s, "How well do students in kindergarten and first grade learn vocabulary through direct instruction compared to those who are just exposed to the words in text (incidental acquisition)?"  Participants. Participants in this first study were in four kindergarten classes and four first graders from the same small, urban school district.  Although the study began with 119 students, pre -test and post-test data was collected on a total of 98 students (46 in the control condition and 53 in the experimental condition).  Further, the school was one of high poverty, and of those in the study, all were African-America...

The article "Vocabulary: A Critical Component of Comprehension" ( Joshi , 2005) explores the crucial role vocabulary knowledge plays in reading comprehension.  In this article, Joshi laments that we need more research to see how vocabulary affects reading comprehension, but explains that a synthesis of research shows that there is a causal relationship--that those with poor vocabulary knowledge also have poorer reading comprehension skills and vice versa .  Compounding the issue is what is known as the Matthew Effect --the idea that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In reading, the better comprehenders read more widely, and their vocabulary increases.  Poorer comprehenders avoid reading (or read easier materials) and do not make gains in vocabulary.  Thus, the gulf widens. Joshi discusses ways of teaching vocabulary, though noting that most vocabulary knowledge isn't directly taught.  Rather, it is acquired with each contact with a word, a...