Assignment 1 - Task Anaysis of Reading

Today's task in class was to try to break up all the components we do when we read.  This was an extremely difficult task.  I learned to read very easily and quickly.  But I was a child who could sit still, filter out background noises, focus, and understood the letter to sound connection.  It seemed to come automatically.  When you sit and think about all the things that our brain has to do in order to be ready to read and to just read it is amazing.  It is no wonder this process breaks down so much and we have so many students who are reluctant/struggling readers.

My partner Darlene and I used Inspiration to create a web showing the processes and relationships that have to be present in order to be a successful reader.  I would highly recommend having students use Inspiration to brainstorm or to visually show relationships between concepts being taught in class.  It is very easy to use and a lot of fun.

Here is the web that we designed to show what we think the process of reading looks like:

As you can see reading involves a coordination between the brain and teaching specific concepts.  The brain processes that have to coordinate are the auditory processing, visual processing and the executive functioning aspects of our brain. If e cannot attend to what the task is (sit still, focus-executive functioning) or hear the sounds the symbols make properly or see the symbols to try to make that connection then it you may not have a rich vocabulary or knowledge to draw on when someone tries to explicitly teach you the next step in learning to read.
Next, we have to be taught the decoding or the sound symbol relationships and then that will lead to us reading words, sentences, paragraphs and whole books.  The more we read the more fluent our reading becomes and we have a better chance of making sense or comprehending what we are reading.  If our brain is spending too much energy on the decoding part then it will not have enough energy to put all the words together to make sense.

A very complicated process!!

For my iPhone today the only new thing I did was to try to search out where my daughter's camp would be going tomorrow on their field trip.  They are going to Blue Beach to look for fossils.  It did not have that location in the map app that comes with the phone.  I think that is a local name which is why it could not be found.

I am thouroughly enjoying having to really look at and take apart these processes that for many of us teachers came naturally.   This is going to help me look at my students differently and come up with some new strategies to try to assist them in acheiving success at school