"The cognitive actions that readers employ while processing print are essentially the same across levels. Readers are simply applying them to successively more demanding levels of text."
Someone gave me this quote and I find it very interesting to think about. Please take some time to think this over and react to this statement. Do you agree? Disagree? And if so why? State your case clearly and let's see where we end up. There has been a great deal of discussion about our younger primary readers...what do you honestly think and believe in terms of this statement?
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I agree with the quote for the most part. I think that readers who have a good understanding of the reading comprehension skills use them in all areas of reading. You use the same types of reading skills when you're reading fiction and non-fiction texts you are just processing them differently. That is what I try to get across to my students how are struggling with one genre or another. We may not particularly like the genre but we're using the same type of skills to process the information.
ReplyDeleteThis type of cognitive thinking is also one that develops more abstractly over time. It is important for use to teach these skills in the primary grades but we should not expect them to master them in any way. The skills need to be introduced at a young age and the more reading a child does the better they become at thinking differently about the text they read. I also think that deeper level cognitive skills comes from a certain readiness of the child and the maturity of their ability.
My class is currently participating in literature circles and when I meet with groups, the one comment I always come away with is, "I wish they would think more deeper about their reading and what underlying message the author is trying to tell us," but then I remind myself that most 10-11 year olds have not experienced a great deal of life altering events and they are not capable of thinking more abstractly about the text.
They are using their cognitive skills well and it just takes time and practice to use those skills in a higher level way.
I don’t think I totally agree. I do believe that in order to process print, there are certain things that have to happen for all readers. These include understanding phonics, grasping word meaning, and then being able to determine what sentences mean, then onto paragraphs, and finally books.
ReplyDeleteWhere I think readers vary is in the depth of their processing. As readers develop schema with age and experience, they are able to bring more knowledge and thought to their reading than the beginning reader, so their connections will be deeper.
A beginning reader will be learning to read and understand sentences and then, eventually, beginning reader books. When they are reading to themselves, young, new readers aren’t necessarily thinking of the deeper questions that better, more experienced readers will come up with. New readers are busy just “getting” the reading. That’s not to say our little ones cannot think deeply, and we all know they can,…they ask the most amazing questions and come up with the most amazing thoughts. But, when learning to read, I believe many new readers are trying to actually read, so they don’t necessarily get to thinking about the big questions until they become comfortable and fluent with their reading.
I don't think I totally agree with this quote either. I believe that the cognitive level of a first grade reader is very different from that of a fifth grade reader. I believe that as students become mroe experienced readers so does their abilities to decode and comprehend texts.
ReplyDeleteIn first grade, students are working more on phonics and decoding texts. When in fifth grade, they are trying to understand the meaning and underlying messages within the texts. I know that younger students are exposed to more complex texts through read alouds, but I think they begin to understand more of it, and think more deeply about it as time goes on. I would like to think that readers gain a foundation that they build on and become more successful readers with. Overall, I think reading is like a staircase. With each step a student takes up, they become a progressively better reader. On each step, they gain something new they take with them as they read new and more demanding texts.
I would have to say that I partly agree with this quote as well. Readers who are processing print go through some very similar actions. Our readers start by taking in spoken language. Next they develop some phonemic awareness. All readers take that phonetic code and turn it back into some meaningful language. Beginning and older readers evaluate words in some similar ways in order to decode them. Readers develop fluency as they practice and as they listen to teachers and others model good reading. All readers also develop vocabulary and become able to comprehend printed material. But from what I know, the brain takes time to mature and so must cognition gradually mature. Younger readers can handle concrete thinking but I don’t think they have some of the abilities my fourth graders now have. Having gone through the first steps to becoming a reader, they now can get some meaning from new and specialized words and can think about unfamiliar concepts as they draw on their schema. Comprehension is really at a different stage as they process things that are unfamiliar and try to understand it. They can even process and synthesize their learning from multiple sources. They can create new knowledge and connect it to their old knowledge. First graders can make connections, but not with all the cognitive complexity of children in upper grades. Young readers spend lots of time and energy on the patterns and sounds in words and less on the thinking processes that really develop our understanding. I don’t feel they would be able to do the same cognitive actions because the parts of their brains which are key to much cognition are developed over time and with exposure to language and ideas. Reading develops over time and I think cognition does too. Beginning readers do many similar things with less demanding texts, but I feel that the more mature readers engage in many more actions as they read.
ReplyDeleteI believe that if this was a true statement then we would only have to teach the skills associated with reading once and then just keep reiterating them year after year. Instead, we spend time introducing new skills to them each year as they develop their reading skills. We scaffold the building of skills on their prior knowledge, but it is new skills that they obtain in this way. We cannot have the same expectations for a first grade student that we have for a fifth grade student.
ReplyDeleteI think that I would have to agree with this statement. When I think of "cognitive actions" it brings to mind many aspects of reading. First, students must have some phoenemic awareness and learn the basic skills of letter and sound recognition, which they then are able to blend into words. In time they learn more complex phonetic and structural patterns. Readers also need to acquire a sight vocabulary, again beginning with very basic words and developing from there. Along with these decoding skills young readers begin to apply comprehension strategies. While the connections first graders make are not as complex as those of fifth graders, the cognitive actions required are the same. They involve a working memory, processing and logical thinking. In addition a student needs to be able to concentrate on what he or she is reading. I don't think it is the cognitive actions that change. I think it is the experience that comes with age that promotes working at a more complex level. Older students have more experience, which leads to more in-depth schema and the ability to make connections to that. They have excercised their memory, and they have a greater ability to be able to concentrate on the task at hand for longer periods of time. Today I used the paint strips with my class for a reading lesson, and this blog suddenly became clear to me! The paint is the same on the whole strip. It just gets deeper because more is added to it. A reader uses the same cognitive actions, but those get deeper as more experiences are added and they can be applied to more advanced levels of text.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this statement. I think anyone who reads uses the same skills for their reading to have meaning. They need to identify the sounds of the letters and be able to make those letters into words. They need to put those words together to make sentences that give them meaning. They need to be able to remember what they read and need to realize whether or not what they are reading makes sense. As readers mature and strengthen these skills through practice and experience these cognitive skills improve and schema increases. This helps readers create more meaning and think about their reading in more depth. The literature they are involved with may become more difficult, but they are still using the same cognitive actions.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the quote. I agree that all readers employ the same cognitive process at all levels. I really believe the main difference across the levels is the complexity of the text. Early readers use phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding and thinking stategies. As they become more fluent, or mature readers, they are using these skills with less decoding but more and better comprehension because they have greater vocabulary and schema. I really had to re-read this quote a few times to understand it and explain my interpretation.
ReplyDelete"The cognitive actions that readers employ while processing print are essentially the same across levels. Readers are simply applying them to successively more demanding levels of text."
ReplyDeleteReading this quote reminded me of a conversation I have had (more than once) with my children recently. Here's the scene...Myself and my 3 children sitting around the table with the kids working on their homework assignments respectively. Sydney comments, "Mom, I don't understand this..." and before she can get the words out of her mouth, Jake has already sneered, "Oh, give me a break, that's wicked easy..." and then of course, not to be left w/o his say, Ben comments, "Yah, right Jake, look how easy yours is..."
More than one conversation has taken place where I have had to gently remind them that their work is at their level, and "Jake, when you were Sydney's age you, too struggled with..."
I know the quote can be interpreted differently, but I feel their is truth to the idea that reading typically happens at a level that is developmentally appropriate, which is why a task that looks "wicked easy" now, may very well have been "wicked haaaard" just a short time before.
Maybe the word from the quote that throws me a bit is "actions", as in the cognitive "actions" that readers employ while processing print are essentially the same across levels. I don't know that I feel the "actions" are the same, but maybe the "level of cognition that is necessary" might be comparative.
When I first read this quote, my reaction was disagreement, but the more thought I give it, the more I agree with the statement. All students do need to approach text using the same basic strategies - they all need to decode the text and make meaning of the words and sentences. All readers employ comprehension strategies to help them to understand what they are reading. I think that the focus of our instruction is different at different levels. First graders need much more instruction and support with decoding words and much comprehension instruction relies on read-alouds, so that students can be free to use comprehension strategies without getting bogged down in the decoding. Independence grows as students mature and as the complexity of the text increases, so do students' thinking skills. I loved Sue's comparison to the paint strip - I think that in first grade, we spend so much time in the light shades, it is sometimes easy to forget that we are laying the foundation for those more vivid shades that will come later.
ReplyDeleteI would have to say that I don't fully agree with this quote. As a first grade teacher, I can say that most of my students do not have the same cognitive abilities as students in the upper grades do. Although my students are currently working to learn the strategies to help understand their reading, many are still in the decoding phase. In first grade, the students are still learning how to decode and make meaning of words, in addition to learning how to monitor their understanding. As they move on to the upper grades, they will have a better understanding of monitoring their comprehension and can focus on the more difficult strategies such as inferencing and synthesizing.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read this quote, my gut reaction was one of, "Yeah, that makes sense." However, I found myself doubting this gut reaction just because I knew other people would disagree with it. And then, I noticed that I kept putting off responding to this particular blog, because I wasn't exactly sure why my gut reaction was to agree with it. After letting some time go by and reading the responses that others have posted, I find myself still agreeing with this quote. If we think about what is needed of readers at different levels and what the cognitive abilities are of these readers, then I think this quote makes sense. For a first grader decoding may take up a portion of the reading process. While this may seem easy to us, I believe that the cognitive actions that a first grader must employ to process this print is pretty much the same as the cognitive actions a fifth grader must employ to process a science textbook. We may view decoding a text at a first grade level as easier, but if we think back to our first grade selves was it that "easy". I think that we have to keep in mind the level of the reader when thinking about this quote rather than comparing what first graders do as readers as opposed to what fifth graders as readers. If we look at the strategy work that has been happening across the grade levels, we notice that all levels of readers are able to utilize these strategies (given with varying ability). And as readers, regardless of the level of the reader, we are utilizing these strategies to help us process print. If I think about the varying reading levels I have in my class and the cognitive actions that those readers employ while processing print, they are essentially the same, but the texts are not. My level K reader is working just as hard at processing his text as my level W reader is at processing her text. It's all relative to the level of the reader.
ReplyDeleteMy first impression when I read this quote was to question whether there was a difference between cognitive thinking and cognitive action, and if so what were the definitions. Cognitive thinking ,to me, means what the reader is bringing to the process whereas cognitive action indicates what the reader is producing. If this is the case the former remains a constant no matter what the age level. The students apply the same skills, such as recognition, understanding the printed word, and using comprehension strategies and available schema throughout the learning process no matter what the age or grade level. When students are beginning readers, their ability to understand the subject matter is limited. Therefore the use of picture books to aid in recognition of words and comprehension is essential. As they mature and are exposed to more involved material they begin to create their own mental pictures. This process as well as the ability to grasp more complex texts is also true for the older students. You learn as you grow. This to me indicates cognitive action. I also enjoyed Sue Wilk's example regarding the paint strip. She pointed out that the essence of the strip remains the same but the paint becomes deeper as more is added.
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