What is the difference between learning to read and reading to learn?

Try reading these terms out loud:

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pedagogy
fiduciary
micron spectroscopy

If you're like me, you probably had to revert back to strategies of decoding and meaning-making you developed as a child.

Now that you've had an experience in learning to read again, what is the difference between that and reading to learn? According to Wolf, it's the difference between working through each step of the reading process and the point at which the reader fluently comprehends what is read. This is the stage where a reader can learn because he or she has time to think.

So what are the steps and how do we know where a child is at in the process?

The first step is an emerging pre-reader. This child is aware of the literate world surrounding him or her. I remember this stage. What I remember most is that people couldn't understand me. It wasn't until a professor at Michigan State taught me nonsense words that I could finally reproduce those sounds into real words and speak the language.

The novice reader is the stage at which a child first learns that words have individual sounds. For instance, "cat" has 3: /k/ /a/ /t/. (Wolf jokes that none of these are "meow".) It's also where we learn multiple meanings like, ". . . bugs can crawl, pester, drive, and spy on people." (Wolf, p. 124) How important is this stage? First-graders who can't decode well end up being eighty-eight percent of my poor readers in fourth grade. Emphasizing the first sound (onset) of a syllable, and the vowel + consonant pattern (rhime), helps the child learn more easily. He or she also has to know that five vowels (plus y) have to double and triple to make up more than a dozen vowel sounds.

A decoding reader can play with "ea" to correctly read this:
"There once was a beautiful bear who sat on a seat near to breaking and read by the hearth about how the earth was created. She smiled beatifically, full of ideas for the realm of her winter dreams." (Wolf, p. 128) Did you understand the importance of "what's in a word"? A decoding reader does. He or she realizes that "sign" can be morphed into "signer", "signed", "signing", and "signature".

The fluent comprehending reader understands that there is a lot to the text that is not said. Wolf gives the example from "Charlotte's Web", where a child is able to understand the reasoning behind Charlotte's intervention in Wilbur's behalf, even though it's not stated. At this stage a child is switching strategies to monitor comprehension. In other words, he or she is reading to learn.

An expert reader not only reads to learn, but reads to feel. He or she knows what it's like to live another life: to think like a scientist, or princess, or detective, or artist. An expert reader lives in a "parallel universe", a "perfect island", a place that lies "beyond the path" of home.