Reading as Sense-Making Beyond the Early Years

This chapter discusses reading as sense-making beyond the early years across a variety of text forms and modalities. An in-depth presentation of young children reading illustrated texts with older children is presented with particular reference to the more than a dozen pedagogical strategies that the older children use in these interactions. The implications of the nature of these interactions is considered. Children’s reading of illustrated print texts for adults is also explored in terms of the relation of words and images. Examples are also provided of the strategies and cues when children read unillustrated texts, when reading internet texts using a search engine and when reading film. All of these explorations of describing reading as sense-making are complicated by the fact that they are inflected not only by reading as sense-making but also by children’s efforts at representing to others the sense they have made of a reading. The general overall processes in reading are summarized in relation to considerations of text features and expressive modalities.