Synthesis Blog #1- Chapter 2: How Smart Readers Think

Reading through the first chapter of Subjects Matter made me focus on the way things are said in different cultures, not only in texts. I am from California and have been going to school in Georgia for two years—going on three—now. The vernacular here is extremely different from home. The way things are said, interpreted, and written are very different in the south. While I will be discussing reading today it is important to address that even different communities readers can interpret something completely different based on their culture.

For most of my life I always thought of reading as something that was almost done like a scanner. This chapter focused on the idea that reading is more than that. “Reading is about comprehension and thinking…these squiggles have to be built into meaningful concepts by the mind of a hard-working reader” I think it is an extremely cool idea to focus on the fact that there are 27 letters in the alphabet and 40 sounds in the English vernacular that have created every sentence, word, or phrase I have said, heard, or read. Speaking and hearing are things that we learn without school. However, school provides us with the supplies to conceptualize and understand what the things we hear mean and how to convey what we want to say. The craziest part is that we are able to understand a language through a created written text, and there are ways to do it even better.

We use these strategies as effective readers—or need to use them more to be better readers—in our daily lives. Complicated texts are sometimes not understood by students because they can read every word and pronounce it but have no idea the context behind it.

I believe that comprehension is not something that is accomplished by everyone reading aloud. In most of my science and social studies classes in middle school popcorn reading was a given. I would not listen to the other speakers but figure out when I would speak and practice my paragraph until it was my turn; not paying attention to what the paragraph said but making sure I said it correctly. I think it would be more important to give the student prior knowledge about the subject in order to allow them to become an independent reader, as stated in chapter one. It would be a more effective way to engage the student in any given passage if they feel like they have even a little understand about the text before they read it. I think by doing so the student feels accomplished by understanding a topic they once knew nothing about; when a student feels accomplished they succeed.
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