In part one of this series, I introduced the following model as a representation of how proficient readers are able to make full use of both the print information and the meaning information in a text. 
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I also described two variations on reading process, which illustrate the ways students may be better at using one or the other source of information.
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We can actively teach children not to comprehend (not meaning to of course), which is actually different than not teaching them to comprehend. The latter, not teaching children to comprehend, is an act of omission wherein we offer little or no comprehension instruction at all. The former--teaching children not to comprehend--is the subject of this blog. It involves actively putting students into reading situations where they can't or are not likely to attend to the meaning of the text. 

For example, many beginning reading texts offer children very little to think about. If we give them these texts to cut their reading teeth on, we literally ask them to practice reading the words without thinking deeply about what the text means. Because the text limits their opportunities to comprehend, our text selection preferences reading without thinking. The solution is not shifting from predictable to decodable texts, or vice versa, because "bad texts" are common in both text formulas. For example, a decodable text that would teach a child not to comprehend would be one that makes little to no sense--"The fat rat sat on the bat on the mat." A predictable text that teaches children not to think deeply about what they read would be a text that simply reads like a list-- "I go to school. I go to the store. I go to the library." 

To avoid teaching children not to comprehend deeply, select texts that give students something to think about. This is a challenge with beginning reading texts! In my experience, only about 25% of beginning reading texts--whether "decodable" or "predictable"--offer opportunities to think deeply across the text.
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Similarly, we actively teach children not to use the print when we give them texts that don't provide opportunities to practice using the sound-symbol relationships they know or are learning. For example, children learning consonant sound-spellings and the "short" A sound-spelling, should have opportunities to apply this new learning with CVC words in the context of reading. If we are careful with out text selection, this can happen whether the text is officially labeled "predictable" or "decodable." 

We also teach children not to attend to the print on the page, when we prompt them to use context to figure out a word first, rather than using context to cross check after using the print information. While context may help them "read" a particular word in a particular text, it does much less to teach them how print works or to enable them to read that word the next time they encounter it. The ultimate print goal, even beyond figuring out the word in front of them, is that they have full access to all the information in the alphabetic code and that they actually learn the new words they encounter. 
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Through our text selection and our prompting we can unintentionally teach readers away from using print or meaning. If this happens enough, children can habituate not using all the information a text offers them, which of course, sets up an unsustainable reading process for them and requires an intervention to interrupt. 

For more on how to teach children to both comprehend deeply while also utilizing all the print system offers them, look for Shifting the Balance, which I wrote with Kari Yates. Shifting the Balance also includes guidance on considering both predictability and decodability when selecting texts for beginning readers. Shifting the Balance will be available in February, but you can preview it now on the Stenhouse website.

As educators, our ultimate goal, of course, is for readers to be equally proficient in navigating the print and in comprehending what they read. In fact, the more we understand about how individual children are doing these two things, the better we can teach them. So the reading process of a proficient reader can be generally represented like this:

I first represented the print/meaning duality with with this two-circle Venn Diagram when I was a regional language arts consultant in 1999, because I wanted all of the work I did with teachers anchored in understandings of children's reading processes. Literally every workshop I've ever taught across two decades, has been held up by this mental model. 

​Of course, not all children are equally proficient in both print and meaning, and variations on the Venn diagram can illustrate some of the differences. For example, children who are skilled in decoding but don't comprehend well, are represented with the same two circles, but the meaning circle is smaller. This reduction indicates that the stronger proficiency is in the area of decoding/word recognition, like this:
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Children with "small meaning circles" have difficulty with language comprehension. Their spoken vocabulary, general knowledge, and/or facility with language structure are typically limited, which places a ceiling on their reading comprehension. Children who's reading looks like this may rely on context to figure out words with little or no attention to the letters on the page.

Similarly, children who are not skilled with reading the words (vs. understanding the words), are represented with the opposite pair of asymmetrical circles: 

Children with "small print circles" have limited orthographic knowledge. They don't fully understand how our alphabetic code works. Consequently, if tricky words are not sufficiently supported by context (which happens increasingly as text gets more difficulty) they get really stuck.

You can read about this simplified model in Preventing Misguided Reading (Burkins and Croft, 2010), Reading Wellness (Burkins and Yaris 2014), and Who's Doing the Work? (Burkins and Yaris, 2016). ​

There are a number of factors that contribute to children reading in ways that favor meaning or favor print, paying insufficient attention to the other source of information. The most troublesome cause, however, is us, their teachers. If our instruction is biased towards print or meaning, then it is possible for children to learn to rely on that source of information and neglect the other. This is, or course, unintentional. 

In the next post in this two-part series, I will describe one of the ways we can inadvertently teach children not to use the print or not ​to comprehend.
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