July 6 assignment

It was interesting to read that during the early 1900s the preschool and kindergarten teachers followed the Maturation Theory and did not teach the children reading instruction. The instructors generally ignored or avoided reading instruction. How a contrast to what is taught today. My five year old just finished preschool and will be attending kindergarten next year. At the parent orientation meeting last summer the teachers told us that our children would know all of the letters of the alphabet, be able to read a little and add basic numbers. I was a little skeptical. However, they were right, my daughter can do all of the things that the teachers mentioned, as well as she know certain sight words. Which method is better? I am not sure, but I don’t think it is bad that she knows these things, and probably will help her get a jump start in her education. Will it help long-term? I don’t know.

The quote from the book about Maturation Theory, “parents as well as educators would cause damage to children’s reading ability if they attempted to teach reading to children who were too young” sound so odd in today’s world. Obviously you cannot teach a baby or probably a toddler to read, but at a certain point, children can recognize letters and may be able to associate certain sounds to it.

Emergent Literacy Theory is consistent with Whole Language Theory. In the Emergent Literacy Theory, it emphasizes the critical role that the child’s home environment has on the development of listening, speaking, reading and writings skills. I do agree with this. We read to all of my three children at a very young age. They all like to read. I do think it has helped my older children (9 and 11) develop their other skills. The early reading and listening has also helped my 5 year old with developing the skills (writing obviously age-appropriate).

In the next chapter, I particularly like the Social Constructivism and Vygotsky's theories. On of his main beliefs is that children learn as a result of social interactions with others. Also, the zone of proximal development refers to the idea level of task difficulty to facilitate learning where a child can be successful with appropriate support. I know that whenever I have my classes participate in group activities (cooperative learning type of situations) the students usually do well. They learn not only about whatever project they are working on, but they also learn a valuable lesson about how to work in groups. Sometimes when working in groups, the students may push themselves because they each have certain tasks to do for the groups as a whole and are much less likely to dissapoint the whole group, as opposed to if they miss a particular assignment for themselves (not in a group situation). Regarding the zone of proximal development, in the same group-type of situation, if a particular task becomes difficult, either I may suggest some ideas (as a facilitator more than a teacher) or I may have a former student of that class come talk to the group and try to suggest some ideas.

In the last chapter the idea of Rauding Theory is discussed. Carver, who created the Rauding Theory, had two important hypotheses. One is that reading improvements requires that readers use textbooks that are closely matched to their ability levels. The second is that the textbooks are easy enough for the readers so they will maintain an adequate reading rate. In other words, the textbooks shouldn't be too easy or too difficult. Students learn best when the material presented to them is in such a format that they can understand the vocabulary and thus comprehend the material. The students often don't want to take the extra step of looking up a word if they don't know the meaning. This would then hinder their learning because some may not bother to even look up an unknown word. I am not an English teacher, but I could just imagine a student's first time looking at a Shakespeare book and getting blown away with what the Old English words mean. It is hard, especially at first.