It is an exciting time, and it is a great day to be a Crusader.
As usually happens, however, when an idea gains momentum and begins to turn toward becoming a movement, questions arise. The question that we hope guides each and every decision in our school and our classrooms is "Is it good for kids?" If that is answered in the affirmative, the next question must be "How can we make it happen?" Our desire to use flexible seating, something that has been present in some form and to a moderate degree in many of our classrooms without it being named as such, is based upon doing what is best for each of kids, upon what will provide the best environment for each of those students to learn most effectively.
We are also considering those questions when we discuss how we approach reading in our classes. Developing the ability to read is, without argument, good for our kids. Developing a love of reading, which will help that ability develop, is good for kids. Developing live-long learners who can then tap into that love for and ability to read is definitely good for our kids. Now, how do we make that happen? Ah, there's the rub.
A friend and colleague of mine, Samantha Neill, wrote last week about how easy it is to kill a good book (read her blog). My last blog post was on reading ("Reading's for Rich People"). Miss Porter and I spent an hour this week just talking about "nerding out" about certain authors and topics and how we can transfer that to our students. I could go on. Reading and developing our kids into strong, effective, and engaged readers is prominent in our minds, and the fact that it is late June does not dampen that; it amplifies it because we are excited to embark on another journey with our kids in a few short weeks. The question remains and drives us: how can we make it happen?
One area we are discussing at length is student choice in reading in an effort to increase reading volume and engagement, and, in turn, build the stamina and skill to allow for higher-level reading. A recent Twitterchat discussion that I stumbled into raised the question of increasing reading volume. I lurked for a bit (yes, I do that on random interesting chats, and yes, I learn something important almost every time). Much of the conversation focused on increasing the number of books students read, setting up competitions and recognizing students who read the most books, creating book races to encourage students to read more books more quickly, and the like. Many of these ideas were focused on late elementary and middle school students. I wondered if this is really what we want as we try to develop a love of reading in our kids.
When my daughter was younger, early elementary age, she and her mother both became concerned because she scored rather low on the local reading assessment. I was not frustrated with her score or her ability to read; I knew where she stood when it came to comprehension, and we read together quite often. What I was frustrated with was that the sole local assessment in reading at that level was a timed fluency test in which the student was asked to read aloud for 60 seconds and the number of words she pronounced correctly was recorded. That was it. Now, I know developing fluency in readers is incredibly important. However, my daughter was told she was a poor reader based on this single assessment. My daughter has always been a thoughtful reader. If she read "The quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," she was going to stop and wonder "why would a fox do such as ludicrous thing?" If she read a passage that used the color red in one sentence, and then used crimson in a later line, she was going to go back and reread the line using red because using two different words to describe the same, or similar, color must be important. She didn't put this habit aside simply because it was a fluency assessment. That never crossed her mind. She was reading, and, therefore, she was thinking. I am to blame for this. That is how we always read. We always asked questions, and we thought about it. I refused to apologize for teaching her that.
A few years ago, I had a student in honors freshman English who told me the first day that she was the best reader in her class. She could read multiple books over a weekend. I told her that was neat, and that we would read quite a bit, so that should help her. A couple of weeks later, she came in on Monday and told me she had read three books that weekend, including one I recommended, 1984. I told her I was excited, that we could talk about the novel. I asked her how she felt about Julia. She responded that didn't really have any feelings for her. That was interesting, as most students have strong feelings of some sort toward the boisterous member of the Junior Anti-Sex League who has an illicit affair with the novel's protagonist. I asked about how the rats were used in the interrogation, and she remembered rats but not why they were used. I asked her if the bullet entering the protagonist's brain was literal or metaphorical. She had not thoughts on that matter. "I read the book!" I remember her saying. "Can I take an AR test or something?" I had no doubt that she had read over every word in that classic novel. I also knew in my heart that she had not consumed the book in any way. She had just read it. Quickly. And that had always been enough. That had always been the goal.
We started talking more about what she read. She had to slow down, which was just a difficult for her to do as speeding up just to read more quickly was difficult for my daugher. She could still wolf down some things that she read, barely tasting anything but the most prominent flavors, but she had to develop the ability to recognize when to slow down, when to savor each page and paragraph as morsel to be enjoyed for its richness. Why was it so hard for her to do that? It was difficult because reading fast was what she did. She was good at it. It was her thing. Eventually, she seemed to learn that having truly in depth conversations about what she read, from Harry Potter to Fahrenheit 451, from "The Scarlet Ibis" to "Lamb to the Slaughter", could be just as rewarding as finishing a book before everyone else. However, she was reluctant and was even angry that her speed was not recognized as the most important aspect of her reading.
So, how do we develop the ability of our kids to read, to read well, and to read fluently, without developing robot readers? How do we push our students to be excited not because they finished a book but because the book was good and made them think as they read it? I honestly believe student a shift in attitude is paramount in this endeavor. We face the challenge of nudging students away from seeing reading as something they simply have to do and need to get done, quickly, toward an experience that worthwhile, rewarding, and, sometimes, enjoyable. Once again, we face the question of "How do we make it happen?"
I believe that two aspects of reading that can help propel the shift are choice and time. We should guide kids to read challenging pieces and the greatest of literature, but I also feel we should encourage them to read what grabs them. Beowulf and Hamlet must be pieces we make accessible and guide our charges toward and through, but graphic novels that include stellar character development and intriguing plotlines can be an effective way to engage students in the act of reading and help them begin to develop as readers. Comic artist and graphic novelist Art Spiegelman said, "Comics are a gateway drug to literacy." We should not tear down a work a student likes and wants to read as being "fluff" when that "fluff" may be the very thing that draws a kid in and allows him to enjoy reading for the first time. After all, to get our kids to be strong, thoughtful readers, we must first allow them to become just plain readers. This is something that has been discussed quite a bit by Sam Neill, Greg Froese, Amber Neighbor, Andrew Bauer, and others lately in our English Nerds Voxer group. (On a related note, the powerful learning tool that is Twitter has allowed me to follow Tim Smyth @historycomics, a powerful voice in advocating the use of comics to teach history and improve literacy. I have not met him face to face or heard him speak, but his passion online is evident, and he is more than willing to share lesson ideas.) This idea applies not only to comics, but also to popular literature that is often looked down upon by English teachers as not worthy of being allowed in their classrooms. Twilight, Goosebumps, Harry Potter, and many offerings from Nicholas Sparks come to mind.
We must also give students the time to read, especially if they are reluctant readers. Giving them the time may allow them to discover that they can actually get into what is printed on the page, especially a page that they have chosen to read. Once they do, they will be much more willing to give their time outside of our classrooms to reading as well. If we force them to see reading as only something they are forced to do and that only involves texts that hold nearly no interest or relevance to them, they will never shift from having to read to wanting to read. However, if we can move them toward wanting to read what they have found to be interesting and worthwhile and give them the time to do it, then they just might develop the skills that will make the more difficult texts accessible, and, therefore, open the door for them to read them as well.
And once that door opens, there is no limit on where they can go.
No comments:
Post a Comment