Before a student can be introduced to reading comprehension they need to have the foundations of grammatical, phonological and graphological information (Winch and Holliday 2013, p.36) already within their prior knowledge. Regardless of whether the pupil is deemed as an expert reader or not, reading comprehension is not merely reading the text presented (Duke & Pearson, p.207, 2002) but being able to implement a series of developing skills in order to derive meaning and understanding. Through reading comprehension students can be exposed through a range of different text genres which will help build their semantic knowledge whilst further developing their reading comprehension skills, with pupils being able to effectively comprehend regardless of content and context (Duke & Martin, 2008 as cited in Winch & Holliday, p. 92, 2013). It is nearly impossible to determine what careers students within middle and upper primary school will be par-taking within once they are adults, there for as teachers we need to ensure that they have the best literacy skills they can receive within their younger years. This is why reading comprehension is essential in regards of this unknown future with comprehension lifting the restriction of not having the skill set to infer text regardless of content and context and thus developing the mind of a critical thinker.
Multiliteracies is an essential part in teaching reading comprehension within the literacy and when teaching reading comprehension to students within middle to upper primary. As Iyver & Luke (chap. 2, p. 18, 2010) state, students in the 21st century classroom are engaged in a range of different forms of multimodal, strengthen the reasoning why teachers need to teach multiliteracies. Cope & Kalantzis (2000 as cited in Anstey & Bull, p. 20, 2006) elaborate on multiliteracies as being the response to students interactions with technology along with the advancement of global knowledge in which students have mainly due to the availability of technology and knowledge.
Pedagogical approaches
Students when reading for comprehension need to be questioning themselves and what they think or know already in the form of their schema in order to process the new knowledge the text is providing them. Duke and Pearson (p. 212 – 125, 2002) touch upon this as a type of strategy student’s use for when using ones schema and semantic knowledge to make an inference. Students are making predications to either themselves or others what they think is going to occur or why an element within the text has occurred. Stanovich (2004 as cited in Winch & Holliday, p.91, 2013) highlights this strategy for what they call the ‘Matthew effect’. Within the ‘Matthew effect’ as Winch and Holliday state bluntly it is ‘. . . the rich-get-richer phenomenon. . .’ (p.91, 2013) when the student already has a great deal of prior knowledge whether it be in general or in response of the texts contents, it is these students who will surpass other students in understanding and questioning the text (Winch and Holliday, p.91, 2013). The rest of the students who are lacking such semantic knowledge or lacking the skills to access their schema will still become richer for their knowledge is being built upon in both semantic knowledge and episodic knowledge (Duke and Pearson, p. 208, 2002)
John Hattie’s (p. 1, 2012) pedagogical approach focuses on the visible learning which occurs within the classroom when approached through students being just as much involved with their learning as their teacher is. Hattie (2012) discusses how students ‘. . . love the thrill of the chase in the learning (the critique, the false turns, the discovery of outcomes)’ (Hattie, chap. 1, pp. 3-4, 2012) highlighting the reasoning for such an approach towards reading comprehension where students are given the opportunity to explore and develop their own schema and semantic knowledge rather than the teacher dictating what they ought to know.
Through such an approach to instruction, students are being proved with scaffolding and implementing a zone of proximal development for students to reach in order to further their reading comprehension abilities (Krause et al, chap. 2, 2010). Through this approach in regards of reading comprehension, student’s metacognition is being developed with students starting to think about their answers and questioning themselves why they believe that to be the answer (Hattie, p. 166, 2012; Duke & Pearson, p. 215, 2002). It is through such an approach which emphasises the student’s semantic knowledge for further implementation in the development of the student’s critical minds.
How can you improve your literacy pedagogy?
The pictured textbooks below are great resources for pre-service and teachers alike to engage within in order to expand your understanding and knowledge of literacy within Primary Education.
Literacy: reading, writing & children's literature: - G. Winch (2013)
Teaching and Learning Multiliteracies: Changing Times, Changing Literacies : - M. Anstey & G. Bull (2006)
Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact of Learning: - J. Hattie (2012)
Multiliteracies and Technology Enhanced Education: Social Practice and the Global Classroom : - D. Pullen & D. Cole (2010)