These discussions reveal critical personal insights and common misconceptions. It takes time for weak readers to construct their understanding of reading, but it is time well spent. Before Reading Establishing a purpose for reading . Once students know that reading is a personally beneficial, meaning-making activity and have some functional understanding of reading processes, they are ready to set an authentic purpose for reading a specific text. These are beginning students' purposes for reading.
More skillful readers have complex, multiple purposes for reading that often change while reading.
Selecting an appropriate text . As a sign of their independence, we want students to self-select texts as early and as often as possible. We also want them to know what kinds of texts they are selecting and to recognize important structural features of texts someone else selects for them, so they can satisfy school-imposed and personal purposes for reading. For example, in the integrated language arts curriculum, students are taught story genre and structure. SAIL teaches students to recognize and use story structure and genre in satisfying their own reader needs, including the simple joys of reading, recognizing, understanding, and remembering.