Wendi {at random}

Anatomy of a Reader

Here is Benjy reading one of his Bob Books. I love these little books from Scholastic. They were originally hand-written by a teacher for her own classroom kids with simple drawings, a handful of sight words, and easy-to-sound-out words for emerging readers. That's my Benjy, an emergent reader. Let's have a listen. 

As an emergent reader, Benjy needs a lot of support to make sense of his books. He needs strong picture clues, words he can sound out with reasonable control, brevity to hold concentration, and practice, practice, practice to build fluency. While the most important thing about reading is that it make sense, the primary purpose of an emergent level book is to support readers as they juggle phonics, meaning, and sentence structure. In short, if it doesn't sound right, it's probably not.

When Benjy read his first Bob book, he was over-the-moon happy. So was I. :)

Camden is my fluent reader. He's into chapter books (mostly about Star Wars ... no surprise there). He doesn't need pictures or short passages to get into a story. He needs background knowledge, a wide array of word patterns and parts to help with decoding new words, and an ability to construct meaning while orchestrating a variety of comprehension strategies. Fluent readers can infer what the author doesn't say. They can ask questions about their reading and answer them as they read. They visualize what they read, make connections to their books, determine important information from the unimportant, and synthesize their reading to form new understandings. Add to that: fluent readers know when their reading doesn't make sense, and they know how to fix it. 

Putting it all together is an exciting process for these readers. I never realized all the thinking that I did to understand a book until I studied literacy development. And yes, I'm just blown away to know that I do, indeed, think.  I always tell my kids: reading is thinking. 

Oh well. That's enough of that. I have no idea why I blogged this. I just found the little comparison of Camden and Benjy's reading development so fascinating, so right on, so real.