I have to admit that reader response plays into my reading habits quite a bit. I find that when I can apply information I am digesting to something practical in my life, it seems to give it a place to hang its hat so to speak in the living room inside my head. Having said that, The Literature Workshop by Blau reminded me of watching my son learn to read.

I’ve put to good use the techniques we have discussed in class and in the TEAPOD and have begun annotating texts, circling places where my flow of a text is interrupted and focusing on my difficulties. I find that when I break it down, I really understand a lot more of a text than I had thought on my first reading. As I analyzed the process which I used to interpret the Thoreau sentence in Blau’s short reading experiment, I found the method I used mirrors the way my son is learning to read. Just as he breaks down the sounds in the words and puts them together to see if they fit to make a word and then determines if the word he arrives at fits into the context of what he is reading, I broke down the sentence into the pieces I knew and the pieces I didn’t know and began to fit them into the context of the full sentence. I identified the words that stopped the flow of reading, just as he stumbles on certain sounds, and focused on them until I had a clearer understanding of their meaning. I was surprised that, although, my initial reaction when I read the sentence was, “huh?,” when I broke it down, I found that the only pieces I stumbled on were “once-and-a-half-witted” and “a third part of their wit” which were both pieces I could easily interpret when I focused on them.

I love literature and in lectures I soak up information, internalize it and learn from the examples provided by my teachers. I know that not everyone learns this way though and not everyone enjoys literature enough to make an effort, but perhaps the student who reads something and goes “huh?” would be more likely to see a text as manageable and not “too difficult for them and above their reading level,” as Blau’s students did on her initial presentation of the Thoreau sentence, if they too were taught to identify the pieces they did not understand. I had some wonderful teachers, who found a balance between lecturing and class discussion. They provided me with some information and let me dig out other information for myself. They broke down the process into small enough pieces for it to seem manageable. Once they modeled interpretation for me, they encouraged me to interpret literature for myself and they accepted my interpretations as long as I could provide valid arguments for them.

It would be easier for me to tell my son the words as he stumbles on them when learning to read, but just like learning to interpret literature, learning to read isn’t about learning words or text. There is an infinite amount of words, and an infinite amount of literature, and it would be impossible for me to teach him all of the words he might ever need to know. Learning to read is about being able find the answers on his own and being able to break down the process and apply different techniques until his interpretation makes sense. Just like my English teachers did for me when I was reading literature, there are times when I step in with information to help him. When he’s trying to sound out a silent “e” or pronounce the “g” sound in “light” I help, but I always allow him the first opportunity because I know how important it is for him to learn to do it on his own and more importantly, because I see how much more pride he takes in the words he works out without my help and how much motivation it provides him in working out the next puzzling piece. It is not his joy at learning a new word that motivates him — it is his joy at being able to figure it out on his own. Why is it that we value of critical thinking skills in kindergarten, but, as Ginny’s optometrist demonstrated, only see facts and information  as important as an adult?