Developing a love of literature as a recreational activity is possibly the most important outcome of a literature program.
Literature builds experience and children expand their horizons through vicarious experiences.
Literature provides a language model, it exposes children to correct sentence patterns.
Literature develops thinking skills by promoting discussion and developing reasoning.
Literature helps children deal with problems, it can provide insights into dealing with similar problems.
Therefore, the most important thing is to read for fun and enjoyment, to foster a love of reading, to engage every member of the family in reading, to read about topics that interest and motivate your child and extend reading into new genres as well.
In addition to a love of reading the application of focused reading supports students to link new ideas to what they have learned previously, remember what has been read, and to think critically. (Hirsch: 2003)
The Four Resources Model (Luke & Freebody 1990) provides a comprehensive framework to focus reading.
These are the reading roles that we adopt as readers in the classroom to prepare for a life-long literate journey.
Code Breaker: How do I crack this code? (grammar, structure, language)
What words are interesting? What words are new? What words are familiar? How do you work out the difficult words? What other words have a similar meaning? Who is the author?
This is about recognising and using the fundamental features of written texts including: alphabet, sounds in words, spelling, conventions and patterns of sentence structure and text.
Meaning Maker: (Text Participant) What does this mean to me? ( prior knowledge, comprehension and inferencing)
What predictions can you make about the text? Does the text remind you of something else? What did you feel as you read the text? What might happen next? How did the text position or change your way of thinking about this topic?
Participating in the meaning of text involves understanding as well as composing meaningful written, visual and spoken texts from within the meaning systems of particular cultures, institutions, families, communities.
Text User: What do I do with this text? (purpose)
What type of text is this? What genre is this? How do you know this? How is the topic framed to influence the reader? How is this text put together? How is this text like other texts you have read? What is the purpose of this text? How would the language change if you were to use these these ideas in a different text type?
The focus of text user practices is the use of texts in real-life situations.
Text Analyst: What does this text do to me? (becoming critically aware)
Are there new ideas that I need to understand in this text? Has the author demonstrated any bias and how do you know this? What was the author's intent and did the author achieve this? How do you know? What is the most important new learning that you need to take from this text? How does the new knowledge change your opinion/position/thinking? How would you reference this new knowledge?
These practises involve readers in the critical analysis of texts in order to understand not only how text work but how they position and influence the reader.