A child’s early experiences with literacy instruction can define his or her attitude towards reading and writing throughout life. Because of the impact on students, it is important for teachers to consider different modes of literacy instruction and the effects they have on students. I have examined my own experiences as an early reader as well as the DeFord Theoretical Orientation to Reading Profile (TORP) to develop my own emerging philosophy of reading.
First, I explore my personal experiences as an early reader. My earliest experiences began before I even entered school. My parents often read aloud to me as a child. I remember my mother stopping to point out words, the letters in them, and what sound each one made. As I entered Kindergarten, …show more content…
I spent a lot of time as a child looking through books my parents had around the house. I think my most meaningful reading experiences happened in this time, outside of school. I don’t recall sounding out words, or stopping to pull out a dictionary every time I came across a word I didn’t recognize. Rather, I remember reading to get meaning out of the story. If I didn’t know what a word was, I would look at the words around it to see if the context gave clues to what it could mean. I would categorize these experiences as top-down. I was reading purely for meaning and having authentic learning experiences with different kinds of texts. Although my formal experiences with literacy instruction were mostly bottom-up, the habits that stuck with me and strategies I use today correspond with my top-down, self-centered experiences outside of the …show more content…
For example, “A child needs to be able to verbalize the rules of phonics in order to assure proficiency in processing new words,” or “an increase in reading errors is usually related to a decrease in comprehension.” These statements suggest that a child cannot understand words and larger units until smaller units and phonics are studied and understood. On my personal survey, I disagreed with both statements. While phonic analysis provides undoubtedly useful tools, I do not think that children would be illiterate without them. Statements on the TORP that I agreed with more include “dividing words into syllables according to rules is a helpful instructional practice for reading new words.” I also agreed with “being able to label words according to grammatical function is useful in proficient reading.” These are both statements that relate to the bottom-up theoretical model, but are not as