Double Entry Journal #9

Chapter 1: A strange fact about not learning to read.

1. What is the strange fact about not learning to read? 

The children who do not fare well in early reading, for the majority, are poor or come from minority groups whose members members have faced a history of prejudice and oppression.

2. Why is this fact so strange?
We should see it as strange because being poor or being a part of a particular social group should not have anything to do with learning to read in school. The author makes the point that these same children can learn everything they need to know about Pokeman; which is very complex. If they can do this, then why aren't they learning to read in school? 

3. What is it about school that manages to transform children who at good at learning things like Pokeman into children who are not good a learning?
Those selling the Pokeman cards believe that every child will be able to engage in understanding and trading the Pokeman cards, they put more faith in ALL children than the school systems do. Also, children are exposed to these Pokeman figures all the time in video games, card games, and plastic figures.

4. What is the differences between a traditionalists approach to learning to read and more progressive educators?

Traditionalists advocate a sequential, skills-based approach to reading instruction. It is a virtual assembly line or what is referred to as a "instructed process". More progressive educators believe that people learn best when they pick up skills stressed by traditionalists as part and parcel of attempting to give meaning to written texts. 

5. Is learning to read a natural process like learning to speak a language?

Advocates of Whole Language argue that it is. It is almost to say that human beings acquiring a native language is a type of "instinct". Today's reading traditionalists argue that learning to read, unlike acquiring language is too new a process historically to have had the evolutionary time required to have become "wired" into our human genetic structure. Learning to read is not a natural process like learning to speak a language. Such things happen when a child is exposed to the right sorts of input and environments. 

6. What is the differences between natural, instructed and cultural processes and which process should reading be classified under?

When humans acquire something by a natural process, like their first language or walking, we find that everyone, barring those with serious disorders, succeeds and succeeds well. Cultural processes mean that there are some things that are so important to a cultural group that the group ensures that everyone who needs to learns them. In cultural processes masters allow learners to collaborate with them on projects that the learners could not carry out on their own. Learners work in a "smart" environment filled with tools and technologies, and artifacts store knowledge and skills they can draw on when they do not personally have such knowledge and skills. Reading should be classified under cultural process. 

7. How do humans learn best? Through instructional processes or through cultural processes? How is reading taught in school? Humans learn best through cultural processes. Reading is taught in schools through the instructional processes but throughout time human beings have always learned best through the cultural processes because it is an active form of learning where the learner collaborates and is involved in the learning process. 

8. According to the author, what is the reason for the "fourth grad slump."

 A phenomenon where some children seem to acquire reading fine in the early grades, but fail to be able to use reading to learn school content in the later grades, when the language demands of that content get more and more complex. These children can't "read" in the sense of understanding in any deep way. 

9. What is a better predictor of reading success than phonemic awareness?
early language ability

10. What is the difference between "vernacular" and "specialist" varieties of language? Give an example of two sentences, one written in the vernacular and one written in a "a specialized variety",  about a topic in your content area.

A person's vernacular dialect is closely connected to this or her initial sense of self and belonging in life. AFTER this is acquired people often also go on to acquire various non-vernacular specialist varieties of language used for special purposes and activities. These differences can be small and sometimes they can be different in large ways.

• Vernacular: There are a lot of gases in the air; two of the most popular are nitrogen and oxygen. 
• Specialized: There are many gases that make-up the air around us, two of the most common are nitrogen and oxygen.

11. What is "early language ability" and how is it developed? 

Early language ability is indicated by things like vocabulary; the ability to recall and comprehend sentences and stories; and the ability to engage in extended, connected verbal interactions on a single topic. According to research the apparent causes seems to be family, community, and school language environments in which children interact intensively with adults and more advanced peers and experience cognitively challenging talk and texts on sustained topics and in different genres of oral and written language.

12. According to the author why and how does the traditionalist approach to teaching children to read fail?

Traditionalist approach is teaching children to fail because it is not the ideal way that humans learn. They are forcing children to memorize instead of being actively involved in their learning. They are not interested or connected in anyway to what they are being taught. 

13. Are parents of poor children to blame for their children's inexperience with specialized varieties of language before coming to school? Themselves. The children's exposure to their parents conversations, experiences, and communities all contribute to a child's specialized varieties of language. 

14. Did you struggle with reading this text? Why? Are you a poor reader or are you unfamiliar with this variety of specialized language? I did not struggle with reading this text because it is written on my level. This specialized type of language is not too complicated and when it was written it was intended to be easily understood. I can be a poor reader in some instances, depending on the specialized language and whether or not I have been exposed to it. It's hard to classify a "poor reader" when it comes to specialized language because maybe they just have not experienced that type of language.