Proust and the Squid, Posting #6

This next post contains a question that I want to answer, what is the difference between learning to read and reading to learn. In my book, Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf, she talks about early childhood reading development. This is where, as stated in my previous post, parents read books to their children at a young age.  This early exposer helps them with their literacy in their later stages of development. Now to answer the first part of the question, what is learning to read?  As I read this chapter I pondered this question and I came to a conclusion. Learning to read is learning the ability to associate words and pictures with sounds. This relates to my previous post because I said that reading to a child when they are young helps them master this process much faster when they are learning how to read.  Now for the second art of the question, what is reading to learn? Reading to learn relates to one reading different text in order to learn about a specific topic. Now comes the question to interweave the first two questions, How are they both important? They are both important because one is not possible without the other. If one does not learn how to read than they will not be able to read to learn. In this chapter Wolf says that children who are read to and learn to associate words with sounds and visual images will be more literate in the future, hence those who do not learn to read will not be as successful when they read to learn in the future.

The second part of my response is how literacy relates to my profession of physical education. As I stated before, in the book Wolf says, when children are first becoming literate they make connections between words and their sounds and also words and their sounds with visual images. In physical education all of these connections are key to the understanding what is being taught to the class. Sometimes I have to give directions verbally. When the students are listening to me they are visually seeing the game or activity come alive in their head. Here they are making the association with the sound of the words with visual images they have associated with those words in the past. If I give them written directions they do the same thing put they use all three connections to understand the game or activity. And if I give them a picture, then they have to use he same three connections just in reverse order. They must first understand the visual image and then associate the images with words. It is sort of like a blue print where different shapes or symbols can mean different things. This may seem a bit confusing and it was and still is a little fuzzy for me, but literacy and P.E. do have a relationship. Whether you are giving verbal, written or visual commands, the students still need the proper literacy skills learned in early development to help them understand what you are telling them during class. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!