Wilhelm Chapter 1

While reading chapter one of "You Gotta BE the Book" I began to get a little apprehensive about the direction that the author was going. I have never really agreed with the "bottom-up" approach to teaching and I think it is ridiculous to spend so much time and effort (as teachers) focussing on the decoding of words rather than the search for meaning. The reason for my apprehension was mainly because the first few pages of the chapter were spent discussing the reasons to teach this approach to reading. I was relieved, however, when the author began talking about the "top-down" approach and the importance of reading for meaning. Perhaps I've just been brainwashed by Western's education department but in my Teaching Literature to Secondary Students class we spent an entire semester discussing the difference between "reading" and "decoding" and why the former is so crucial and the latter is so worthless (my teacher was highly opinionated on the subject). I think that it is important, at least it will be in my personal teaching endeavors, to help students realize the benefit of reading for meaning. So many students feel the being a "good" reader means that you read aloud well and you are able to read quickly. I want to do my part to dispell this myth and create classrooms of students who are able to read for meaning in a story. The point of reading is not to time yourself and chart how many miscues you make - we read because we enjoy it and are able to find connections and meanings from the text that we interact with.