Cultivating enjoyment in reading might be the single, most important skill that we teach in school. Get it right, and students can do anything. Get it wrong, and doors could remain locked which would otherwise be open. Students, who are both at-risk and below-grade-level in reading, are more likely to go to prison. The gap in reading(between students who have prerequisite literacy skills) is there on the first day of kindergarten. It is stark. It is recoverable, but it is observable on day one. But as they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We really want to make sure that we do our best to prevent that reading deficit from ever occurring. I believe the very first thing that we can do for children is to teach them to enjoy reading at the earliest age possible.
When considering making reading enjoyable, we need to make sure students have daily exposure to grade level or above grade level texts, even if they are behind. I have to tell ya, how we are teaching reading in many public elementary schools is not promoting enjoyment of reading. In fact, it is just the opposite. Students are reading overly simplistic and shorter texts in order to prepare for standardized assessments. We are grouping students, and often the lowest group is not reading grade level texts. Why is that a problem? Well, even if a student is behind in fluency skills, their minds are often still very much on-grade-level in terms of understanding grade level content and themes. The students in those lower reading groups are often reading material which is boring as it is too simplistic. Instead of teaching them to enjoy reading, we are snuffing out the idea that reading unlocks doors. We need to free them to read interesting and complex texts, even if their initial fluency levels lag behind.
Here are some things that I used in my classroom and some things that I have gathered over the years:
- Give students a choice in their texts. This is something I wasn’t immediately good at doing. However, we can still teach things like voice, theme, point of view, purpose, characters, plot, and setting even if students choose their own books.
- We cannot read a disproportionate number books with feminine themes to boys. This is a HUGE problem since most of our elementary staffs are predominately women by a large ratio. There has to be a diversity of texts which do have manly themes. Boys will “tune out” books with feminine themes.
- Don’t over analyze a text. When we are reading a great book as adults, how many of us would like to be asked detailed questions after reading it? Discussions are great. Asking too many questions is not great. I used to be a big advocate of close reading. I now believe it sucks the life right out of the enjoyment of reading.
- Read alouds. I have a previous posted about this already. However, read aloud books by the teacher are just an excellent way to develop enjoyment. Students who struggle with fluency can still understand complex themes on grade level, i.e. they still have a receptive auditory channel which works just fine and can still readily contribute to conversations about grade level texts. Plus, read aloud time with students is just fun. And that leads us to the next point….
- Choose books which are interesting. Whether you are doing read aloud, a book group, or an independent study, the texts which are the subject of study must be of high quality. Whether it is poetry, informational, narrative, or opinion texts, those texts need to be complex and engaging. If I had to guess, I would say 90-95% of classroom texts are just not interesting. I don’t thing they are interesting to students, and I don’t think they are interesting to most teachers. I went to great lengths to use texts which were interesting. This might be the most important thing that a teacher does in literacy.
- Discussion groups. High quality conversations are incredibly important in literacy. Teachers can model this, and eventually students will facilitate these discussions. And folks, we must be careful not to over regulate student discussions about literature. If we want students to develop their own perspectives and insights AND to learn to analyze texts in meaningful ways, we must let them actually do exactly those things without teacher interuption. A great question to initiate discussion is to simply ask, “What do you think about that particular passage?”
- How do I find great texts. This is connected to point 5. There has never been a time in human history where great reading sources have been more plentiful. You can find great texts online, libraries, Amazon, used book stores, and more. What is worse, it seems that our classroom choices have increasingly lost their flavor. In other words, we are choosing boring texts which are found in canned RTI probe teaching units for example. It is important to use a variety of texts. Go get great literature. Don’t settle or less.
- Use graphic organizers. I have talked about Dinah Zike in prior posts. Use her stuff.
- Don’t make Literacy overly complicated. KISS and keep it interesting. A lot of complicated Literacy programs use trendy terms and fail to teach enjoyment of reading.
- Lastly, for students who struggle reading in terms of fluency, there is no greater resource than audio books. Have a student put on some headphones or earbuds, and let them read ON GRADE LEVEL texts. I think sometimes we get so hung up on fluency, we forget that the current world in which we live…has options on almost every computer for texts to be read. Please, always allow students to have the option to at least listen to grade level texts, and that includes students who have the most severe learning disabilities.
Pro Tip: I use a combination of digital text and actual books. Use those interesting texts to create a reading culture which values enjoyment of reading.
Bonus Tip: Don’t get hung-up on using shorter texts. Chapter books are a fantastic resource. They encourage students to recall information from previous chapters on previous days. It works parts of the brain which shorter texts do not such as long term recall. Longer texts also encourage students to make connections across days and across chapters which they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.
