Traditional LiteracyIf the majority of “texts” that we look at within the academic community are traditional, or written, then we need to prepare students for success accordingly.
There are 3 specific cueing systems that work to interpret written text. The 3 latter cueing systems work to interpret all "texts," whether written or not (Dr. Zisselsberger). |
What can we do?
Teachers can plan accordingly to help students with their literacy development. The following are suggestions to assist students at each level of the cueing systems.
Graphophonic
Prompt students to use a vocabulary or "word" journal in which they note specific words that give them trouble. This allows students to identify troublesome words, but not spend valuable time in the moment decoding a word if the message can be inferred without it. Time can be set aside to revisit the unfamiliar words later. Teachers can also teach students via modeling how to determine whether the text's message can be understood using context clues, when certain words may be challenging to understand within a text. This is important for students to learn because some environments out of school will not permit time to pause and look up a specific word—students will need to be able to infer meaning, or the "whole-picture" in out-of-school contexts.
Syntatic
Teachers can identify sentence organization for students or prompt students to pause and evaluation sentence constructions while conducting whole-class reading. For instance, while reading a passage that contains a passive voice construction, teachers can pause the reading to have students look more closely at the particular sentence, and ask the class about the syntatic construction. This practice is beneficial because teachers can do this naturally when specific examples occur in whatever is being read in a given class. This teaches students that evaluating such constructions can become a natural process over time, which can become a reading strategy when students encounter more complex or unfamiliar texts.
Semantic
Teachers can anticipate challenges in comprehension and ask students to define a term prior to introducing the word in the specific content area classroom. This helps to make the term more salient in the classroom context because it tells students "Hey! I'm showing you that this word means something different in the context of my class!" as opposed to introducing it without any acknowledgement of its other purposes. Students will then be more likely to remember the term in all of its contexts.
Pragmatic
Teachers can conduct mini lessons on historical usage of certain words/conventions that are pertinent to the day's lesson before students are exposed to the text. Doing so will help ground students to better comprehend the lesson as a whole. Teachers can also prompt students before the mini lesson by asking what they know about the historical context to convey that the word/convention was not the same in the past as it is today, which can help to pique students' interest before getting into the mini lesson.
Discursive
Encouraging class discussion about expectations, surprises, interpretations, and reactions to texts can help expose students to different ways of thinking, which works to support individual differences as well as culture in the classroom. This is a vital way to help students explore empathizing with people different from themselves by getting inside someone else's head and thought processes.
Visual
Prompting students to explain how to read visuals is necessary in the classroom. With coordinate graphs, teachers explain X and Y coordinates. Similar principles apply to other visual representations. With the image depicted above for the 3 written text cueing systems, teachers can help students see the 3 distinct circles before moving on to how they integrate with each other. More often than not, teachers can help students find distinct and individual components of a visual that work to make up the whole.
Graphophonic
Prompt students to use a vocabulary or "word" journal in which they note specific words that give them trouble. This allows students to identify troublesome words, but not spend valuable time in the moment decoding a word if the message can be inferred without it. Time can be set aside to revisit the unfamiliar words later. Teachers can also teach students via modeling how to determine whether the text's message can be understood using context clues, when certain words may be challenging to understand within a text. This is important for students to learn because some environments out of school will not permit time to pause and look up a specific word—students will need to be able to infer meaning, or the "whole-picture" in out-of-school contexts.
Syntatic
Teachers can identify sentence organization for students or prompt students to pause and evaluation sentence constructions while conducting whole-class reading. For instance, while reading a passage that contains a passive voice construction, teachers can pause the reading to have students look more closely at the particular sentence, and ask the class about the syntatic construction. This practice is beneficial because teachers can do this naturally when specific examples occur in whatever is being read in a given class. This teaches students that evaluating such constructions can become a natural process over time, which can become a reading strategy when students encounter more complex or unfamiliar texts.
Semantic
Teachers can anticipate challenges in comprehension and ask students to define a term prior to introducing the word in the specific content area classroom. This helps to make the term more salient in the classroom context because it tells students "Hey! I'm showing you that this word means something different in the context of my class!" as opposed to introducing it without any acknowledgement of its other purposes. Students will then be more likely to remember the term in all of its contexts.
Pragmatic
Teachers can conduct mini lessons on historical usage of certain words/conventions that are pertinent to the day's lesson before students are exposed to the text. Doing so will help ground students to better comprehend the lesson as a whole. Teachers can also prompt students before the mini lesson by asking what they know about the historical context to convey that the word/convention was not the same in the past as it is today, which can help to pique students' interest before getting into the mini lesson.
Discursive
Encouraging class discussion about expectations, surprises, interpretations, and reactions to texts can help expose students to different ways of thinking, which works to support individual differences as well as culture in the classroom. This is a vital way to help students explore empathizing with people different from themselves by getting inside someone else's head and thought processes.
Visual
Prompting students to explain how to read visuals is necessary in the classroom. With coordinate graphs, teachers explain X and Y coordinates. Similar principles apply to other visual representations. With the image depicted above for the 3 written text cueing systems, teachers can help students see the 3 distinct circles before moving on to how they integrate with each other. More often than not, teachers can help students find distinct and individual components of a visual that work to make up the whole.