Quotes from Marie M. Clay
"If the child is a struggling reader or writer the conclusion must be that we have not yet discovered the way to help him learn. (2005, Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals Part 2, p. 158)
“If literacy teaching only brings a simple theory to a set of complex activities, then the learner has to bridge the gaps created by the theoretical simplification. The lowest literacy achievers will have extreme difficulty bridging any gaps in the teaching programme and linking together things that have been taught separately.” (2001, Change Over Time, p. 105)
"Teachers contribute to the shifts in the processing which children are able to carry out, by:
• altering the learning opportunities provided
• prompting to influence the choices made by the constructive learner
• altering the interaction between teacher and learner." (2001, Change Over Time, p. 98)
• altering the learning opportunities provided
• prompting to influence the choices made by the constructive learner
• altering the interaction between teacher and learner." (2001, Change Over Time, p. 98)
“Comprehending is not just a literacy task…it is what a child is doing when holding a conversation with someone, listening to someone reading aloud, or reading on his or her own, at any time or place. It is not an aspect of thinking that emerges only after children have done the reading or passed through the first two years of school. All educators need to hold as their top priority the expectation that learners will understand what they are reading. The reading process the child builds should involve comprehension, for if we train the child to read without involving these powerful thinking strategies from the beginning, it will be more difficult for some of them to think about content later…Comprehension lies in what learners say, what is read to them, and what they read and write; learners should know that all literacy acts involve comprehension”. (1998, By Different Paths to Common Outcomes, p. 217)
“Conversation with a child about the story after taking Running Records adds to the teacher’s understanding of the reader in useful ways, and leads the child into discourse about stories.” (2013, The Observation Survey, p. 63)
“During these first weeks of lessons, the teacher will choose books that draw upon what the child knows, that challenge him in one or two new areas, and that invite him to retell a part of the story. One or two questions will elicit a partial retelling. This will highlight understanding (comprehension) as an expected outcome.” (2005, Literacy Lessons Designed for Individuals Part 2, p. 33)
“A brief conversation after the reading can achieve a variety of things. A good question can reveal a wealth of understanding.
- What did he do that was nice?
- Does the pot look too small to you?
- How did Mum trick Greedy Cat?
“Most theorists assume that the brain is working on several levels as we read and write. If required you can deliberately give your attention to any level in this hierarchy:
- to a feature of a letter
- or to the letter level
- or to the cluster or letter sequence level
- or to word level
- or to the phrase level
- or to the sentence level
- or to the gist of the passage.