Reading Workshop

Here is a poem I wrote in 1995 that was published in The Reading Teacher - it is about reading. carry me away talk to me of gentler times, even if none exists, for I live in a world of violence. tell me of romantic love, for I live in solitude, with no one at my side. enliven me with stories of courage and spirit, for these days frighten me, and chase away my hope. sweep me to new lands, new places, for the ones I have seen lately are crowded and dirty. sing to me of great heroes and dragons, for the dragons that breathe down my neck are too real, and far too near. lose me in my senses, fill my emotional vacuum, help me to find a world in which living has more grandeur than dying. hold me close in the pages of your warmth. refresh me. let me see anew with the bright eyes of a child. carry me away, cradle me in your hard covers and soft words. rock me gently in your story and reveal to me, the ripples in your heart.

Visual Literacy             Because the centuries old domination of written language texts is being challenged by the rise in importance of the visual image, a focus on visual literacy has come to the fore in literacy research and instruction. Mitchell (1994) has described a pictorial turn , a complexly related transformation occurring across fields of inquiry, asserting visual images are not fully explicable based on linguistic models of written language. His pictorial turn established the fields of visual culture and visual studies as legitimate academic disciplines concerned with multimodality and other hybrid forms of communication.             Avgerinou (2009) labels the pervasiveness of visual images in the mass media as the Bain d’Images Era , or era of the image bath, referring to the inundation of visual images in contemporary environments. She warns, however, th...

Classroom Discourse The traditional Initiate-Respond-Evaluate (Cazden, 2001) interactional sequence or pattern of classroom interaction is a particular speech genre with historical precedents and instructional trajectories. This discourse pattern is closely associated with transmission approach to teaching, placing the control of classroom interactions squarely in the hands of the teacher. In these interactions, teachers take turns at will, pose questions, decide on the direction of the discussion, decide who talks and for how long, what subjects are worthy of being discussed and serves as the arbiter of meaning and correct interpretations. Bakhtin  delineates between monologic or authoritarian discourse as described previously as a transmission approach, and dialogic or a more democratic discourse (Holmquist, XX). From this perspective, dialogic interactions offers a counter-narrative to the traditional initiate-respond-evaluate (IRE) pattern of interaction or recita...

The primary objective of reading is comprehending what is being read. Although reading instruction may focus on other aspects of reading, for example phonemic awareness, vocabulary acquisition, or decoding skills, the goal of with one’s engagement with a text is comprehension. Readers brings to the reading event their cognitive capabilities, purposes for reading, knowledge of language and the world, and prior experiences. Readers draw upon these resources to make sense of the texts they encounter. In addition, other factors play a prominent role in reading comprehension; the text being read, the context of the reading event, both immediate and socio-cultural contexts, and the purpose or goals for reading. Reading does not take place in a vacuum. The author of a text, the context of the reading event and the reasons one reads all play a role in reading comprehension. It was once assumed that reading comprehension was simply a combination of decoding and oral comprehension skills. That...