Brief Outline of the Four Resources Model (Freebody & Luke) “ Literacy education is ultimately about the kind of society and the kinds of citizens/subjects that could and should be constructed. Teaching and learning just isn’t a matter of skill acquisition, or knowledge transmission or natural growth. It is about building identities and cultures, communities and institutions.” ‘The Four Resources Model describes four possible sets of reader practices, each necessary to achieve the literate person described above: the code breaker, the text participant, the text user, the text analyst ‘The code breaker is outside of the text and uses code-breaking strategies to get within. The role of the code breaker is ongoing in that a reader is a code breaker until s/he has finished reading a text ‘The text participant is inside the text. Depending on the text type, the reader may be participating in different ways. A cook reading a new recipe may be participating in different ways thinking, “I could make this, I have all the ingredients. | know how my kids would like this.” Someone reading a novel would be participating differently. That readet may shed tears at a sad part or smile at a humorous incident, Occasionally the reader may recall a related life experience. A text user has some purpose for his or her reading. The text user reads not only to understand and participate but also to make some use of the text. Text purposes affect the shape and the structure of different texts and thus, different texts are used in different ways. The text analyst steps back from the text to analyze the text itself from a social critical literacy, perspective. With critical literacy, the reader interrogates the text and the author's motive, examining why the author may have written the text and identifying ways the author tried to shape reader meanings. ‘Beginning readers can engage in all four of these reading practices. However, itis important to note that some books written for early readers make it almost impossible for the beginning reader to be a text participant, a text user, ora text analyst. Books written with controlled vocabularies or phonics texts make text prediction very difficult, for meaning in not a priority in the construction of the text. It follows that where meaning in not a priority in the composition of a text, the text will serve no authentic purpose and therefore, there is no reason to read it, Code breaking is not taught first, before or isolated from text participation, text user and text analyzing. This means, for young children, that the teacher is often the code breaker, enabling children to participate in, use, and analyze texts before they can read them for themselves. By doing this, young children are able to read to tive; they are able to engage with texts that are portant to them, texts that are worth reading. The four reading processes are all developed simultaneously and in an integrated way in early grades. Code breaker is taught and learned and nurtured a5 learners engage with authentic literate practices that are part and parcel of the classroom. fom “Reading to Live” by Lor Wilson (Heinemann, 2002) The Four Process Model by Freebody & Luke