Ideally, students would stop judging books by their covers and at least try to read what they are given. Yet more often than not, I am faced with the question, “How do I get students to love the amazing books I love, or at least tolerate the books we are assigned since they’re the only remaining ones in a full class set?”
Here’s how I handle this situation.
Well, first things first. I make sure students can read the book. Only when my students are able to fluently read the book (meaning the student does not have to look up more than 3 or 4 vocabulary words per page and can relate to you the basic plot after an individual reading) will they be able to take that comprehension into the next level of questioning and analysis. Granted, this happens most often with classics published for adults, but it can happen with trade books for children as well.
If the administration says, “Phooey to your research-based suggestion! Teach this work of literature — it will challenge the students to rise!” Then, I work to create two or three clear, attainable objectives for the book.
My students are not only 8th graders, but all of them come from a different language background and a little under 50% are still English Language Learners. I am not denying my students’ tenacity, but I also don’t want to set them up for defeat.
So, in order to tackle this beast, I focus on just three goals. I want students to (1) know and connect with the basic plot, (2) use the story to apply their skills to a specific element of literature, and (3) identify and connect story elements to whichever major themes I have for that book.
I know it feels oversimplified, but with these three goals, I am able to prune the extraneous. With stronger readers, I can assign deeper prompts connected to my three goals and with weaker readers, I can create cloze exercises [link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloze_test], chapter summaries, and other supports to scaffold their mastery of these three goals. Anything outside these goals, I nix! Sure, I would love to hit every theme, motif, character motivation, and symbol in these novels — I’m a lit major! Yet, for my eighth graders, I know that the best way to have lasting impact — to get pieces to stick to their ribs — is not to spread the story shallow, but to give them tools to dig deep.
Some would argue that I am not doing the book justice, and I admit that it is a risk. Yet I am hoping that by creating manageable objectives for my students now, they will not be turned off by the books that they most likely will reencounter in their future education.
So now tell us, how do all of you handle this situation?
The post Teaching difficult novels appeared first on The Horn Book.
Yesterday, I was talking with a friend of mine who related
a simple story to me which bears repeating.
As a storyteller, my friend often visits schools with no more than her voice and her body, charged with the task of entertaining and engaging students with stories for 30 minutes. She is superb at what she does and, after her presentation, she overheard this conversation.
"I just don't get it," said one teacher to another.
"What?"
"We have all kinds of bells and whistles, quick response exercises, hand and sound signals, technology and yet our kids are always all over the place. This lady comes in with her voice and a story and suddenly then are mesmerized. What's with that?"
What is Engagement?
Now certainly familiarity may be a part of this equation but I believe the question is worth pondering. I also see it, not so much as a judgement of tools, but as a question - how do I engage my students? Certainly with our tech savvy children of today, our various technology tools are important. But there is something deeper behind whether those tools work in classrooms or not. The real questions are
"What authentic teaching can I do that will capture their interest?":
"Am I so much on the "delivery" channel that I've forgotten the power of teaching?"
The topic is certainly a bit broader than literacy but I see literacy as the doorway to engaging students. What about you?
Michigan State University's
National Center for Research on Teacher Learning attacks the issue with some important information: "Faced with the concerns for classroom time and "effective" use of it, can put difficult demands on teachers. What it often comes down to is how good are we at helping students construct meaning, including having time to discuss and explore?
Take that back to literacy. Are we so into "drill and skill" - repeat the rule back fast - that we forget that education includes thinking? I've met children who are compliant word callers and decoders but they don't have a clue of how to use reading as a tool to get information they need, to analyze and synthesize what is presented in the text. Here are a few literacy-related questions to think about in your own teaching:
1. Do you use read-alouds daily to engage and foster thinking about text? Engaged Interactive Read Aloud techniques, covered in my new book
Before They Read, are a most efficient means of exposing to student what great readers do when they read).
2. Do you let the size of the class keep you on the "controlling" channel instead of the learning, exploring channel with students?
Professo
I was thrilled when my copy of IRA's The Reading Teacher came in the mail yesterday. If any of you are members of the International Reading Association, this journal is one of the best in terms of practical ideas.
This month Tim Rasinski (as he does so often) pairs with a classroom teacher. This time the two discuss how reader's theater can create an academic pathway to grow students' fluency. I hope that those of you with experience with reader's theater review this article's abstract as well as the article itself if possible. On the online version, there is even an idea for using Jan Brett's book Hedgie's Surprise in a reader's theater environment from Read Write Think. If you have not used reader's theater in your classroom, now is a great time to try it, especially with the detailed approach outlined. Tim's website also provides a great list of sources for reader's theater scripts. You can even have your students create their own as part of a writer's workshop or groupwriting experience.
One point of the referenced article is particularly important in today's classroom with an increased focus on fluency. The purpose of improving fluency is increased comprehension. I fear that in the past few years, many schools have swung the pendulum too far in the direction of focusing purely on speed and the result, as Tim and Chase talk about in this article, is children that can read like a house afire but have little understanding of what the meaning behind the text is. That can be terribly damaging to their ability to read increasingly complex text as they move forward in their schooling.
I saw this first hand as I conducted a research study on fluency and the influence of family reading on first graders' growing fluency. In a study conducted in schools in GA, AL, TX and TN, about 80% of the students we asked to read a leveled piece which included inference could not identify what the children in the story were doing (building a snowman). Many students immediately upon finishing the one minute reading (timed so we evaluate all the students within a reasonable time) asked, "how many words did I read?". It seemed they had nearly been "programmed" to ask that, even when there was no direct evidence that this is what our assessment was attending to. In fact, I recommended this response to our evaluators who heard that comment: "I wasn't paying any attention to that; I wanted to listen and see if you sounded like you were talking when you were reading and whether you understand what the story was about." Although this was not the focus on the study, it was indeed a wakeup call.
Educators must be very careful as we work with students to improve their fluency that we do not minimize or sacrifice expressiveness, pacing, automaticity in word recognition, and decoding. Worst still, if speed is our primary focus, children get the mistaken idea that fast word calling is reading. That is simply not what makes a good reader. Whether we are working with beginning readers in kindergarten or first grade, or older students still struggling with reading, we must be sure that we are sending the messages that fluency is a tool, that reading is squeezing the juice of meaning out of text. If we do not send that message loud and clear, we may see children benchmark on fluency assessments but their comprehension (tested more frequently that speed of reading and much more important) will suffer.
Certainly we want our young and maturing readers to be fluent, but we also want them to be able to think deeply and widely, analyzing and evaluating what they read, rather than simply regurgitating facts. That takes excellent, engaged teaching, giving some time to fluency, but always going back to the focus and purpose of reading, to gain meaning from that text.
I'd love to hear about your experiences with reader's theater and how you are using it in your classroom. How are you putting fluency in its correct perspective with your students?
Thousands of educators met this past week in Atlanta for the annual International Reading Conference where reading teachers, authors and publishers gathered to celebrate books and reading. This is one of the larger shows on the educational conference circuit as reading is such a foundational skill.
Some of the show buzz concerned the admission last week from the Department of Education that Reading First failed to make a difference in student's reading comprehension. The program has been under attack almost from its inception for cronyism and mismanagement. Although most educational publishers have been keeping close track of the program and have been aware of its deficits for some time, the announcement may have come as a surprise to educators whose districts and schools have benefitted from Reading First funding.
In a nutshell, evaluators agree that Reading First programs spend too much time on basic instruction and too little time on reading actual literature so that students have not substantively increased their comprehension. In fact, the decrease in reading actual books, both in the classroom and at home, is of great concern to those most passionate about the benefits of reading.
Reading First is inextricably linked to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation which is currently before Congress for reauthorization. Good teachers are leaving the field because schools are decimating their curriculums to comply with NCLB testing requirements. I have never read such a poignant perspective as Jordan Sonnenblick's essay in the recent School Library Journal article where he states:
"What I loved most about teaching middle school English was the books, the stories, the poems. I loved putting great thoughts into the hands of my students, and watching what I really, truly saw as a holy communion between child and author, with me as the officiant. And it kills me to know that if I went back, I wouldn’t have much time to teach literature, which is increasingly seen as a frilly extra. So I’m leaving the classroom because my colleagues were right: going back without time for books would kill me. But it hurts very, very much to know that, in my absence, the classroom is killing my peers and my would-be students anyway."NCLB has reshaped the landscape for educational publishers, and decreasing time and money is certainly affecting the amount of real literature students are exposed to in school. While there may be a cumulative negative effect, there are still teachers and classrooms where authentic literature continues to play a starring role as evidenced by the reading teachers at this week's meeting in Atlanta. Teachers, librarians and publishers believe in the power of authentic literature to deeply affect a child's life and learning. As book enthusiasts, what can we do to support the educators who are struggling every day to find the balance between teaching reading and actually reading?
I admit it. I was going to read blogs. I've already checked Yahoo, Gmail, and MySpace. Just for messages, you understand. You know, clearing out the inbox. Sort of like cleaning off the cyber desk so I can write. Then a niggling voice said, "C'mon, don't forget us. You haven't checked in on your LJ friends and ages." I almost gave in. But no. I....Must....Write! So I will resist the urge to read your blogs for a bit longer. I must finish Black-Eyed Susans revisions. I'll check in with you later.
Have a great writing day!
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