Monday, October 3, 2011

Meaning Orientation

When children are learning how to read, they must teach themselves how to decode the jumble of letters and spaces on the page. This means taking abstract things like sounds and letters and turning them into full words that mean something. Doing this successfully is not always an easy task. After learning how to read, decoding the sounds becomes automatic and does not require or produce any thought. The words are words and we, as adults, have made connections between that mix of letters and the thing that this word stands for. Children who are just learning how to read have not yet set this automatic response, so every new word that they encounter is a new puzzle that they must decode. Once they have mastered the decoding of this new word, they must learn the meaning behind it and remember it for next time.
Some children can pick up the decoding much easier than others because as they are going through the process, they realize that they must look for meaning behind the words. They know that they have to make sense of the letters that they are putting together to form a complete thought. When children can learn how to do this, learning to read will come much easier. For the children that do not understand this concept yet, reading is difficult because each letter and sound is a separate entity. Their decoding skills look at the sounds as different things and do not automatically put them together to form something completely new. Teaching children to decode correctly is an essential part of literacy learning.

5 comments:

  1. I really like your analogy of word decoding to a puzzle. I think framing the process of learning to read in this way would be helpful to parents because it might feel less overwhelming for them in helping their children. Suggesting that they, along with their children, take one step at a time in this process could be very helpful to busy parents.

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  2. I agree that some children may understand how to decode new words easier than other students. Those students will have to work with their teachers more and gain the skills they need. This way children can focus on the meanings of the words and stories.

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  3. Decoding skill is important to children because without the skill, children never understand new words. If children do no understand the meaning of the new words, they cannot understand the stories of the books. It will waste their time. That is why decoding is an important skill for children and they should be taught how to do it if they have problems with decoding.

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  4. I think this is a great way for teachers and parents to think about reading and how children begin to learn to read. While decoding words is automatic to us, it is not yet for early readers. For adults, it would be like suddenly changing all English text into a foreign language that had no similarities to it. While the decoding process may be slow at first for children, it is really amazing what they are learning to do. It can be frustrating for all involved, but if adults put themselves in the early reader's shoes, it may be less overwhelming.

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  5. Decoding the words on the page, as an important task for children to eventually learn, might be a touchy subject to push too early. I think as teachers, we need to be conscious of the sensitivity of a child, and wait to push context over content. Allowing a child to appreciate the value of literature. Sometimes the pressures of “decoding” correctly can overshadow the power of the message within the text!

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