Why+Independent+Reading!

December 6, 2007 Published: December 5, 2007 =Teacher Talk: What To Do About Reading?= Is the printed word falling out of favor with today’s students? Will text-based learning soon give way to multimedia approaches that more closely match the Net Generation’s daily experiences with interactive technology? A recent //Newsweek// cover feature, [|“The Future of Reading,”] and a November story from //Education Week//, [|“Young People Seen Losing Love of Reading,”] raise those possibilities. In her //Education Week// article, Kathleen Kennedy Manzo also reported on a [|recent study] by the National Endowment of the Arts that found “American youths are reading less in their free time than a generation ago, a statistic that bodes poorly for their academic performance, job prospects, civic participation, and even social well-being.” These articles sparked a thoughtful conversation among members of the national Teacher Leaders Network, who shared a variety of perspectives from their diverse teaching positions across the K-12 spectrum. Here are some highlights. Among our faculty, we have all noticed that the kids are not reading enough. Even at the Advanced Placement level, I can see that students do not have enough experience with reading to tackle challenging texts. They do have pretty high auditory levels of vocabulary acquisition, I think, from being exposed to media in all its forms from a very early age. My observation is that they can use words properly in context but are poor spellers. My guess has been that they are familiar with hearing the words but do not have a visual record of the words, because they hear far more words than they read. It has occurred to me that in Elizabethan times not many people could read. They went to "hear" a play, not see one. Though most were illiterate, they lived in an aural society and were better listeners than we are today. When books became pervasive, the experts of the time said these easy references would destroy the discipline of memorization. And they were right. Could we be moving to an era where reading is not as essential as it once was? //If u cn rd ths, u cn ern $!// Remember those ads on the matchbook covers (back when everybody smoked)? The ads were for shorthand courses, but they look like the text messages of today. Language is always changing. Maybe reading will be an old technology sometime soon.
 * Mary T, high school English and journalism teacher:**

This year my primary professional goal is to help my students read more and enjoy it more. I had an epiphany at the first of the year when I was grading reading quizzes and many of my students were failing, as usual. I heard a voice in my head say, "You cannot continue to let them get away with this. You have to figure out a way to get them to read and engage with the text." I began trying all kinds of strategies to make it happen. For example, I borrowed an idea from a reading specialist to have reading time in my class every day for about 20 minutes. I read the same book as my kids so I am modeling reading. Most of my kids say this time is really helping them, and I have noticed that almost every one of them brings the book to class and spends the time wisely. I also am having my kids annotate their novels this year. That has helped tremendously. I have a high number of kids who are buying their own books so they can just annotate right there on the page without having to do it on another sheet or on stickies. We have had wonderful discussions (even with freshmen!) based on our annotations. One more thing I'm going to try is an idea I got from a teacher I’m mentoring—a book talk with parents and students together. My freshmen are reading //Night//, and their assignment is to prepare study questions for the book which the parents must read and answer. I have had a few kids tell me their parents say they won't do it, which makes me sad. But I'm hoping for the best. If it doesn't work, I'll just keep trying things until I hit on something that does work.
 * Gail T., high school English teacher:**

In my school district, there is a big push to include more nonfiction reading at a younger age. I am a big fan of "twin texts," providing a nonfiction and a fiction book on the same topic simultaneously. It gives both teachers and students lots of content, reading strategies, and compare and contrast learning opportunities.
 * Gail R., instructional coach:**

I look at the struggling readers in our middle and high schools and wonder how they survive in their content area classes. These kids don't love reading—the process of reading totally escapes them. For one reason or another, they missed something along the way. They love to hear the fiction stories—and even nonfiction—but the automaticity in decoding and constructing meaning from text doesn't exist for them the way it does for us. Marsha, like you, my goal is a joint effort where reading teachers and content teachers work together to help these kids–the reading teachers teaching the process, and the content teachers teaching author's craft and the language of their subject area. This is an analogy that I use with my content teachers – imagine having to speak and read and write in 7 different languages every day. That is what happens to our kids. The language of math is very different than the language of science, which is different than the language of social studies. Teaching reading is not like running a book club. It doesn't mean you read a great story and talk about it. Teaching reading is not teaching English. English teachers (and I was one for many years) are not taught to teach reading—they are taught to teach analysis of literature to students who can manuever their way through text.
 * Mary Anne, a literacy coach in a large school system:**

I have watched this conversation with interest, because for the past several years I've taught nothing but an elective, “Reading for Pleasure,” at my high school. We started small, one section per semester. Now, we run 12 sections, and could fill others if we had the teachers. In my school, there is a strong culture of reading—our media center is active and kids talk about their books. For the first nine weeks of this semester, 131 students in my classes read a total of 269,157 pages. (This includes books for English classes, not necessarily for pleasure.) My class is designed to share books with students, and to give them a place and time to read, uninterrupted by other demands. Then, everyone writes about what they've read. I read with my students every day (tough gig, I know), and I respond to every entry, as a fellow reader. I've noticed the same 'dip' in interest among our students that others have noticed. Over and over in their literacy autobiographies students tell me how much they loved reading in elementary, and then “something” happened. They can't even articulate what it was. I wonder how much can be attributed to new demands on kids' time, new interests, or peer groups that may not value reading. I spend lots of time in class talking about books, fiction and nonfiction, young adult, classics, popular adult fiction. Once kids learn (relearn?) what they like, they DO read for pleasure, because they have the power to choose what they read. I want to throw one more idea into the mix. Nowhere in all these articles do I see a serious acknowledgement of the reading kids do the most: online. I would argue kids are interacting with text much more often than the "experts" think when we factor in computer use.
 * Claudia, a secondary teacher:**

This year my primary professional goal is to help my students read more and enjoy it more. I had an epiphany at the first of the year when I was grading reading quizzes and many of my students were failing, as usual. I heard a voice in my head say, "You cannot continue to let them get away with this. You have to figure out a way to get them to read and engage with the text." I began trying all kinds of strategies to make it happen. For example, I borrowed an idea from a reading specialist to have reading time in my class every day for about 20 minutes. I read the same book as my kids so I am modeling reading. Most of my kids say this time is really helping them, and I have noticed that almost every one of them brings the book to class and spends the time wisely. I also am having my kids annotate their novels this year. That has helped tremendously. I have a high number of kids who are buying their own books so they can just annotate right there on the page without having to do it on another sheet or on stickies. We have had wonderful discussions (even with freshmen!) based on our annotations. One more thing I'm going to try is an idea I got from a teacher I’m mentoring—a book talk with parents and students together. My freshmen are reading //Night//, and their assignment is to prepare study questions for the book which the parents must read and answer. I have had a few kids tell me their parents say they won't do it, which makes me sad. But I'm hoping for the best. If it doesn't work, I'll just keep trying things until I hit on something that does work.
 * Gail T., high school English teacher:**

Claudia, I love the "Reading for Pleasure" elective! I teach the "Reading Because I Didn't Pass the End-of-Grade Reading Test" elective. Believe me, they don't "elect" to take my class. My kids are the what-happens-in-middle school kids. On the first day of school, I shared my reading History with them, and they struggled to write their own (poor readers = poor writers). They all said they were excited about reading in kindergarten but hate it now. Every day I hear at least one student say, "I hate reading!" I am trying to do everything that all the experts say because my goal is that when they get to high school they'll tell their teachers that the "something that happened in middle school" is that they got excited about reading again. And I agree with you that they are doing more reading than we realize online. My son, who is now 24, tried to eat the books when I attempted to read to him when he was a toddler. Now he reads everything he can log onto about sports and politics. And his fantasy football newsletters are full of figurative language and imagery. Somehow we have to figure out how to "join 'em" if we can't "beat 'em."
 * Cindi, middle grades reading teacher:**


 * Would love to hear your ideas, your thoughts on our students and reading, how they are doing with independent reading, whether you think this helping them to develop a love for reading, and what else you think we can do to inculcate a love for reading in our students as well as help them with content area literacy strategies!!!!**