Susana Komoda EED-470 October 6, 2013 Reading Philosophies Reading Philosophy Constructivist -Decision making is done by both the

teacher and the student -Students are active participants -Prior knowledge is used to construct new knowledge -Theorists that support this philosophy in some way are: Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Dewey, Piaget and Vygotsky -Students listen to a story and then are asked to write an alternate ending -Student groups are asked to choose a picture book and create a skit -Students write their own books -Daily sample of work -Observing students -Recording observations -Audio/video recording -Portfolios Explicit Instruction -Decision making is done by the teacher alone -The teacher systematically explains/demonstrates reading skills i.e. phonemic awareness, decoding skills, and rules of language -Theorists that support this philosophy in some way are: Montessori and Skinner

Characteristics

Reading Activity

-Teacher directed lesson on a particular rules of language i.e. the silent e at the end of a word -Skills based games, worksheets, and flash cards drills for sight words -Standardized tests -Verbal decoding assessments of phonemically correct and incorrect words -Multiple choice questions for reading comprehension

Reading Assessment

Reading Philosophies Summary There are two main reading philosophies that influence the teaching of language arts to young children: constructivist instruction and explicit instruction. Throughout history, educators and philosophers alike have debated the subject of learning and how

knowledge is best attained and how it is best passed on to students. When this debate is centered upon reading instruction it is often reffered to as the "reading wars". Many philosophers have helped create the methods in which knowledge is gained and transferred, for example Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky, Montessori, and Skinner have all been crucial to the teaching profession (Morrow, 2011). In the following paper, the constructivist philosophy and explicit instruction philosophy for teaching reading will be described. Then, the approach that the author prefers will be documented and disclosed. The constructivist reading instruction philosophy, has deep roots that extend to the ideas of John Piaget who believed that children learn through doing and interacting with the world they live in, in order to be able to construct knowledge for themselves (Marrow, 2011). Constructivist think that social interactions such as conversations and discussions are a catalyst for learning and for understanding (Brown, 1994). Constructivists practice teaching in a way that encourages and fosters conversation with and amoungst the students (Draper, 2002). Teachers are careful listeners of these discussions because they allow the teacher to assess the learning that is going on in their classroom. This is a student centered approach to teaching where the student is involved in the decision making process as well as the process of constructing their own knowledge. The teacher's role in a constructivist classroom is to help each student learn the best that they can by turning their classroom into a community of learners where all the students feel like they belong (Baines & Stanley, 2000). The constructivist approach rely's on a students prior knowledge and pre-existing understanding which may or may not be what the teacher thinks that it is. The constructivist approach advocates

cooperative learning groups, peer tutoring, extra time to think about questions and reflect, as well as self-directed type projects. There are a few areas that could potentially be problematic within this approach, for example in a group perhaps the smartest student does most of the work, students find wrong answers that they think are right, and some students could get frustrated with the whole process and completely disengage. On top of that there is the possibility that when left to there own doings some students will not learn anything at all (Pace, 2011). The explicit reading instruction philosophy, is supported by theorists such as Montessorri and Skinner. It is a direct systematic approach to teaching that contains specific procedures for teaching (Pollard-Durodola, 2009). In explicit instruction, classrooms the teachers are the experts who repeatedly demonstrate and explain the skills they want their students to learn (Camboune, 1999). Some examples of the skills that are taught directly to students are phonemic awareness, decoding skills, reading comprehension strategies, and basic rules of the English language. Explicit instruction is nesssasery in some aspects of education, for example in phonics. Problems with decoding words affect 80-90% of struggling readers (Rasinski & Padak, 2008), so direct phonics instruction is a nessacery component of the teaching environment. The author prefers the constructivist philosophy over the explicit instruction philosophy because she believes that students are first and foremost children and they need to be supplied with ways to express their creativity and child like playfulness throughout the curriculum. Students like to generally like to interact with each other which works to their benefit because it has been proven that when students work in groups they tend to do things like implement, evaluate, and modify strategies in order to

further their understanding or correct their own misconceptions (Van Keer & Verhaeghe, 2005). However, the explicit reading instruction philosophy has a definite place in every classroom and is needed to teach certain skills. Explicit instruction can be used at the beginning of a lesson and constructivist activities can be used to expand student knowledge on that topic (Marrow, 2011). For example, in a study of reading comprehension students where first given explicit reading strategies instruction, then they were given the opportunity to practice these strategies with a peer tutoring partner and the study yielded good results with the use of both kinds of philosophies (Van Keer & Verhaeghe, 2005). If teachers only use the normal teacher question, student answers, teacher gives an assessment type of curriculum than we run the risk of our students becoming very passive and unengaged learners (Van Keer & Verhaeghe, 2005). In conclusion, it is a combination of these methods that truly will serve the most amounts of children. The balanced comprehensive approach (BCA) to teaching reading elicits the best of both world to form a strategy for teaching reading that is focused on individual students and not just on the most popular literacy method of the moment (Marrow, 2011). Teachers have to remember that their classrooms change each year and each class is made up of students with different needs and learning modalities, which the teacher must take into account when creating and implementing a lesson plan.

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