There are certain skills that a child needs to have established before ever even entering a classroom to ensure that he/she is able to read.  So, what areas of processing need to be developed in order for students to maximize their reading and writing potential? 

   In Parts I and II of this article, we discussed Marilyn Jager Adams four processors and highlighted the phonological and orthographic processors.  In Part III, we will address the Meaning Processor and the Context Processor.  

   These processors are developed in children informally by listening to and talking with family members.  They are more formally developed through the experience of parents reading to their children.  We know that children from higher socioeconomic families are exposed to more oral language and vocabulary than are those from families in the lower socioeconomic level.  Thus, the children from the higher socioeconomic families have an incredible advantage in the meaning and context processors.  

   When a child is decoding a word, s/he quickly gets support from both the meaning processor that says, 'I know that word,' and the context processor, which says, 'That word makes sense in this sentence'.  As these four processors work together, the child develops an increasingly robust list of sight words and becomes familiar with the predictability of the test.  This person becomes an independent reader.  

   Unfortunately, a high percentage of students have neither the vocabulary nor the familiarity with written language to support their decoding process (the phonological and orthographic processors).  When these students decode a word, they don't know if it is a real word or not because they cannot locate it in the meaning or context processors.  
   
   Such students may have nonverbal learning disorders, but often they come from lower socioeconomic groups and simply haven't been exposed to oral language or print as frequently as have other groups.  Thus, even though their meaning and context processors are fully functional, they aren't providing the support needed to help these children decode.  

(Read Part IV of this article series to learn more about the four processors.)

   There are certain skills that a child needs to have established before ever even entering a classroom to ensure that he/she is able to read.  So, what areas of processing need to be developed in order for students to maximize their reading and writing potential? 

   In Part I of this article series, we discussed Marilyn Jager Adams' research on the four processors and highlighted the phonological processor.  In Part II, we will address the orthographic processor.  

   Whereas speech stimulates the phonological processor, the orthographic processor is stimulated by print.  It processes strings of letters and 'glues' these letters together into spelling patterns and syllables, allowing for swift recognition of words of varying length.  If this processor is acting properly, it processes the letters of the word and quickly checks with the phonological processor to see if the word sounds correct while also connecting to the meaning processor.  

   If the meaning processor recognizes the word and the contextual processor supports its meaning in a passage, the word is read correctly.  This process becomes automatic at some point during first or second grade.  At that point, the phonological processor is relied upon less and less, except when encountering a difficult or technical word.  The processing of most words neurologically shifts from upper portions of the brain to an area right behind the ear.  

   Students who experience this shift flourish as readers, and, through the discipline of reading twenty minutes a day, they will see over a million words a year.  Many of these words are stored for spelling as the orthographic processor quickly confirms spelling patterns with the phonological processor.  Children with fully functioning processors are able to recognize patterns in words for reading and spelling and soon become independent language learners...

   Ah, if only life were that simple!  Unfortunately, less than a third of our students have these strong abilities.  This percentage is even lower in the inner cities where students haven't been exposed to oral reading as frequently as have students from more affluent socioeconomic situations.  Thus, the rest of the population needs stronger support from the phonological processor to make the gains needed for successful reading.  

   (Read Part III of this series to learn more about the final two processors and their role in preparing your child to read.)

   There are certain skills that a child needs to have established before ever even entering a classroom to ensure that he/she is able to read.  So, what areas of processing need to be developed in order for students to maximize their reading and writing potential? 

   To answer this question, let's refer to one of the most extensively synthesized examples of reading research accomplished to date: the classic Beginning to Read  by Marilyn Jager Adams.  In it Adams discusses the four processors and how they relate to word recognition.  The first is the phonological processor, which is stimulated by speech and develops the ability to hear both sounds and syllables in words.  

   Research in the last ten years indicates without a doubt that these abilities are required for the acquisition of reading.  As long as a child is exposed to speech in early life, s/he will naturally learn language and will develop this processor--that is, as long as there is not a problem in the brain's neurological processing, particularly in Broca's area and Heschyl's Gyri.  The child needs to have normal auditory processing (i.e. the ability to echo sounds accurately).  

   In addition, the student must have three phonological skills established:

• Segmenting: Tapping out each sound for words like 'hit,' 'run,' and 'camp'
• Blending: Putting sounds together to form words, as in 'h-a-t' = "hat', or 's-i-t' = 'sit'
• Phonemic Manipulation: Manipulating phonemes in ways such as this: What is rug without the 'r' or lamp without the 'p'? 

   If a child has these skills well established for spoken sounds and then practices them with the sounds of written letters (the orthographic processor) before entering first grade, the child will be ready to learn to read.  If not, the student is in for a long twelve years.  

   (Read Part II in order to find out more about the Orthographic Processor and whether or not your child is adequately prepared to learn to read.)