Literacy and Literacy Teacher Education in Grades 4-8

Reading is a developmental process beginning with a foundation built in the primary grades and continuing throughout the lives of students and adults. Misconceptions arise that every child will learn to read by third grade, thus, students will be able to read for a lifetime. However, different sophisticated reading skills are needed as students progress through grade levels and in life. Reading becomes more complex. The processes of reading, which are necessary for more intensive study, change from learning to read, the focus of elementary school instruction to reading to learn (Chall, 1983). Text becomes a source of information using technical terms and graphics to further explanations. We specifically emphasize that reading instruction should also change in middle schools, as students are required to engage in more intensive study of subject matter (Irvin, 1992). Adolescent students in middle schools must be critical consumers of information from a multitude of print sources which requires different and additional reading strategies than are used during the learning-to-read phase of instruction.