Reading Like Behavior: Its Role In Learning To Read By David B. Doake

Often an underappreciated children’s behavior in reading development, “reading like behavior” is an essential cog to the acquisition of reading fluency among children. This behavior is categorized as “a means by which children can begin to self-direct, self-monitor, and self-correct their own learning to read strategies” as they spend more time engaged in reading (Doake, p. 2). A key aspect of this behavior developing and increasing a child’s ability to read is that a parent is involved in the process in a loving and supportive manner. Not only does the emotion and joy shared with the parental figure associated with reading experiences increase the inner motivation of the child to read more on his own, but also the no-fail environment surrounding the child encourages him to actively work through his reading development without a fear of making mistakes. As long as a child is actively involved in the reading process and supported by family members he will continue to progress through the stages of reading development. At first a child experiences mumble reading, then cooperative reading, followed by personalized reading, completion reading, echo reading, and finally adult reading. Initially, the child spends time whispering the words to himself, then attempts to read along with the parent – either on pace with the adult or slightly faster or slower, before exhibiting an understanding enough of the story to introduce alternate wording to the text that reflects the child’s interpretation of the plot and details. During the later stages of growth, the child can correctly complete the sentences or phrases that their parents begin on the page, can repeat the sentences after they are read to him, and eventually can apply rules of grammar and express a more methodical form of reading understanding.

            The concepts developed and expressed throughout this article raise many connections to a real classroom and its implications for teachers. A key implication is that “children can begin to read as soon as they are read to” which implies that reading is not a secondary skill that requires prerequisite skills and that reading fluency is rather a social skill that can be learned through interacting with others (Doake, P. 9). The second implication from the article is that reading fluency must be developed on two fronts, inside the classroom and inside the home. As a teacher it is our job to express the necessity to parents that they take a role in helping their children learn to read, but more importantly we need to demonstrate the correct manner in which to do so if we want the students to truly embrace reading. The third implication related to teaching reading argues that reading materials and print within the classroom needs to be visually and academically engaging as opposed to the basal reading programs. Most lower SES schools implement these programs emphasizing more of completing aimless worksheets and then trying to read stories without any interesting details and the results of the programs more often than not show reading gaps widening between grade levels. The final two implications discussed in this article are that children need to be read to on a daily basis and that the materials need to be large enough for all of the students to interact with equally; both of which are easily managed by creating a buddy or volunteer system in the school and by creating “big books” that students can share. Overall, Doake presents a well constructed article on the development of reading like behaviors and stresses the key aspects that both a teacher and parents need to focus on in assisting children to develop reading fluency skills.



"By being in the company of an adult who regularly provides an oral model of reading behavior and by constantly associating books and this behavior with pleasurable and desirable activity, young children are placed in a state of disequilibrium for they are sharing in an experience over which they have no control. According to Piaget, when children are placed in this situation, they will automatically strive to achieve a state of equilibrium by attempting to gain mastery over the experience, especially if it has been a pleasurable one for them (pg 3)." Children should constantly be read to in a way that makes the experience fun. They will be more likely to have the desire to read if they like to be read to. If their story listening experience has been enjoyable, they will find great joy in being able to read for and to themselves.

This picture embodies the idea of parents being supportive and involved in their child's reading.  Reading with children, starting at an early age as shown in this picture, encourages and motivates them to keep up with reading later on in life.

Reading Response 1

Reading Instruction and Social Class by Patrick Shannon
In this article, Patrick Shannon talks about how social classes are further separated in schools. According to Shannon, teacher expectation plays a huge role in student success. Some teachers use middle class ideals to group students of all classes into low and high performing groups instead of using academic histories. Once these students are grouped, they stay in those groups for, at least, the next few grades. Teachers treat the low and high performing groups differently, which causes an increase in the gap. For instance, teachers allow for more interruptions in the low-achieving group, which gives them less instructional time than the high performing group. Shannon offers three different solutions to this problem: the academic, the affective, and the emancipatory. The academic is about keeping social structure and giving society the highest talent pool possible. The affective focuses on the individual and ignores social structure and societal constraints. The emancipatory solution offers to rid society of social structure by teaching students the historical reasons for the social differences and coming up with solutions.

Toward an Educationally Relevant Theory of Literacy Learning: Twenty Years of Inquiry by Brian Cambourne
In this article, Brian Cambourne seeks to prove that children that are not good at conventional school learning are not necessarily deficient by studying how children learn outside of the classroom. Cambourne found that there were many students in his classes that seemed to have trouble grasping simple concepts in school, but outside of school that could understand complex ideas fully. Cambourne did a lot of research on oral language development because that is one of the most complicated ideas a child learns to grasp outside of the classroom. He found that there are many conditions that contribute to learning outside of the classroom and these conditions should try to be applied in schools. The most important factor of learning is engagement. The students need to be engaged in demonstrations in order to learn from them, which is why it is so important to make topics seem relevant, interesting, and doable.


"Their frequent mistakes trigger student and teacher interruptions, and the unfortunate cycle begins anew." This quote is talking about the cycle that occurs when teachers treat students of lower ability reading groups differently than they do their higher achieving students. They interrupt these students more often, give them difficult materials, and give them too large of assignments. These aspects of the reading lessons don't help the students improve their reading abilities, but instead further handicap them through this "unfortunate cycle." - Shannon Article

  One of the images that quickly came to mind while reading these two articles was the picture of an elementary school reading group. Although both articles discuss issues among reading instruction, I feel that this picture more appropriately relates to Patrick Shannon’s article. In his article, Shannon examines the issues that arise from the self-fulfilling prophecy of educators and the consequences of grouping students as learners not based on their academic understanding of the material or level of mastery, but rather along the lines of social stratification and aspects. In essence, if the teacher is not aware of his own biases and consciously works against those beliefs to properly place and instruct each of his students at an academically challenging and appropriate level, then he is providing a disservice to his students and is placing a ceiling on their ability to grow in his classroom.

Class Expectations - Kyle Diveny 1/8/13

In this portion of the LL ED Block I expect to gain more educational theories and knowledge to support the teaching practices that I will hopefully be embracing and utilizing in my future classroom. I also expect to learn multiple ways to provide reading instructing to my students and to help them increase their levels of mastery while making the process fun and enjoyable for all of my students. In addition, I expect to gain from this course professionally by developing a more formal and intellectual manner to describe my own teaching beliefs and practices to others in interviews or simply as an advocate of better teaching philosophies.

Sam's Class Expectation

From this class I expect to be more comfortable with teaching reading in the classroom. Right now, I am very nervous about teaching reading because I have always been uncomfortable with my ability to read. It was my worst subject in school. I hope that this class will make me feel better about reading and help me to teach my students effectively. As a professional, I hope this class will help me with my ability to work in a group. Working with people will be an extremely important part of my future, so I want to become even better at it. I also think that I will learn a lot about being a teacher and what to expect.

Jen's Class Expectations

In this course, I expect to gain knowledge of how to approach teaching children's reading in the classroom.  I have learned about Curriculum Based Measurement and how to gauge students' levels of reading fluency, but in the course I hope to learn the next step--how to teach students how to read and help students who are having trouble.  This class is the foundation for what we will do while teaching reading in our classrooms in the future, and I am so excited to have this knowledge in my repertoire.  Professionally, I am excited to become more well-rounded in my knowledge of reading curriculum.