The next chapter in Reading to Live discusses one of the most important of all the four practices which is becoming a text participant and making meaning. The author states that once a code breaker has entered the text, he or she will become a text participant. What is interesting is that Wilson also believes that children are able to actually participate before they can begin code breaking. An example of this, as noted in the book, is when children make predictions based on titles to ponder developing relationships and plot outcomes. I thought this was a valid point because it proves that children bring meaning making to the table before they can even read and pronounce all of the words and sentences in the correct context.
Wilson continues to write that “The ways we make meaning or understand a text are linked directly with our reading purposes…” Once again this proves that children already bring something to the table when attempting to code break and become a participant. They view each and every attempt as a purposeful venture into literacy. These purposes are what allow text participants to find meaning as it relates to how they have previously made sense of the world they are already accustomed to. I think this is very important in my discipline because students are going to be reading about physical education and health and they are going to seek purpose within the realm of how their body has already experienced ways to move and improve itself through concepts like lifelong exercise knowledge and nutritional program development. They will have to find meaning as it relates to their previous experience or they will never believe there are positive benefits to this learning process. Simply put, if they can’t explore the possibilities by becoming a participant in the ideas then they will be dissuaded to continue the process. This often happens in literacy, as Wilson mentions, because teachers often test whether or not a child has understood something which consequently sets boundaries to what a child should understand. It limits their exploration and meaning making of the material at hand.
There are also some useful strategies at the end of this chapter for teachers to use in regards to allowing text participants to make meaning of their works of literature. One of the most beneficial ideas was very simple but I feel it will be useful to understand how children will communicate true meaning related to a piece of work. This was just allowing students to ask questions and create answers to concepts or ideas in the reading that weren’t necessarily answered by the author. This will allow the teacher to understand many things such as how the student viewed the material as far as purpose is concerned as well as what personal meaning they brought to the table when participating in the text. Wilson believes that “so much more thinking and learning occurs” when compared to a structured question and answer session in which students are called upon to answer few questions related to the material. There is no pressure for right or wrong answers and children don’t feel threatened by the ways in which they made sense of whatever was being studied. I couldn’t agree more.
It's interesting how children grasp aspects of literacy even before they can "technically" read or write. The book I'm reading discussed how children will often scribble before they can write. This shows that they recognize written language, so they are trying to mimic this process. In fact, they not only recognize written language in general, but the written language of their own culture. My book shows the "scribblings" of children in different cultures. They are all distinctly different in ways they depict their culture's written language.
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