Sounding out words, like 'cat' and 'dog,' is only part of the process of learning to read.

Novice readers must be taught to decipher and understand the meaning behind the words being read. The road to true literacy also includes the ability to construct meaning. We'll specifically highlight paraphrasing, making connections, visualizing, questioning, and making inferences. Students can be helped to learn strategies in a variety of ways. In the traditional classroom where language is privileged over other ways of knowing, opportunities to construct meaning through art diminish as learners progress to higher grades and reading and writing therefore shift to the more common curricular resources of the classroom. Learning Strategies for Constructing Meaning . Some strategy learning takes place through reading and writing experiences (Dole et al., 1991). Construct definition: If you construct something such as a building, road , or machine , you build it or make... | Meaning, pronunciation, translations and examples Extensive research over the past two decades has shown that some of these strategies seem to be more significant than others (Dole, Duffy, Roehler, & Pearson, 1991). Strategies for Constructing Meaning Strategic readers use a variety of strategies to construct meaning. In today's lesson, we'll take a look at how readers can use text to construct meaning. Thematic units with authentic literature provide students with opportunities to utilize the same strategies and skills across a theme. ‘An affected individual, after a stroke, tumour or wound to the area, loses the ability to construct grammatical sentences.’ ‘We begin to understand the ways in which the alphabet is used to create words, and grammar to construct sentences.’