For a long time – and I mean like 150 years – education and literacy have been built on hierarchical principles.
The belief system has been,
- In kindergarten we teach the basics – or how to learn to read.
- By the fourth grade, we teach reading to learn. (And let’s do it fast!)
- Then somewhere in high school, the reading now has analytical purposes.
How’s that been working for us?
When we look at how many 12th graders leave our classrooms and are asked to navigate any content area, in any field — how many are operating at the highest levels of critical literacy?
About 6%.
Truth is, we are always (and have always been) in a state of reading to learn AND learning to read. Think about it. I could always learn something from Barney Rubble on my Fruity Pebbles cereal box.
Look at my current situation as an example.
I’ve been a teacher for two decades. Less than a year ago, I began to blog. A whole new learning and decoding process for me.
Just about two months ago, I started to Twitter. Here, I thought I was so tech-savvy with a successful blog – Pow! New language, new code. But that’s okay. Lifelong learning is a simultaneous process.
As information changes, as media changes — sometimes we’re learning to read (new text, new tools, new code) and sometimes we’re reading to learn. So in reality – there is no hierarchy that exists.
There is a series of skills and competencies, a set of behaviors and habits that simultaneously happen.
We can break this down by using the Four Resources Model.
Code Breaking
Meaning Making
Text Use
Text Critic
In future posts, I’ll be breaking down each resource and how this model can (and should) be used, not only in reading instruction, but across content areas.
