Cognitive processing Top-down vs bottom-up processing

How to teach reading skills
How to teach reading skills depends on which objectives the teacher aims at developing in his/her students and on how lesson plans are structured. To this effect, teachers must make decisions about the objectives of their reading comprehension lesson. For example, the following objectives guide teachers in teaching reading skills:

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  Reading for gist?
  
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  Reading for specific information?
  
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  Reading for detailed comprehension?
  
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  Developing speed reading?
  
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  Training learners in specific reading strategies?
  
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  Inferring meaning from context?
  
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  A combination of the above goals?
  
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  …
  

How to teach reading relies also on the way the lesson is structured. In fact, any reading lesson plan should include three stages:

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  Pre-reading stage
  
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  While reading stage
  
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  Post-reading stage
  

Pre-reading stage
According to the constructivists, we construct new knowledge by relying on our prior knowledge. Being able to decode the information from the text is insufficient. Teachers should encourage learners to utilize their own world knowledge and worldview to make sense of the text. This knowledge, which is often referred to as schema (see above), is the essential condition for the process of construction of meaning.
Pre-reading activities are an essential part of the reading lesson because of the following:

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  They help students be more prepared for what they are about to read.
  
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  These activities help learners anticipate the topic of reading.
  
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  Formulating expectations about the content of the text help learners prepare themselves for the kind of language, vocabulary, and even grammar that might be used in the text.
  
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  These activities create the need for reading the text to know more about a topic.
  
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  By creating the need to learn more about the topic, these activities increase students’ motivation.
  

Teachers must activate students’ knowledge about the topic of the text they are about to read using the following activities: