Reading and Intention

​A review of materials on the Science of Reading via professional articles and curriculum websites describes the program as primarily for grades K-6, but also for special educators and literacy specialists to grade twelve. It’s a wonder, though, how the lack of reading ability is recognized through high school for probably thirty percent of those who are barely or below proficiency, but the program is primarily for designed for grades K-6: Unfortunately, the complexity of texts grows exponentially beyond grade six when compared to the ability of struggling readers to follow along. Again, a misconception made here of reading is that once a child can read words, comprehension, fluency, and sophistication of thought will naturally follow. But history teaches that it doesn’t. Let’s consider what works.
 
Engaged readers have to be created by exposure to text that encourages them to become independent and intentional; we have to find them where they are and provide books they can enjoy—this is a process that should be available through the years in all content areas. Some schools at one time used a daily twenty minute, “Stop, Drop and Read” period to model the importance of reading for pleasure.
 
Unfortunately, the push for testing to evaluate learning against the corresponding—always “new” --curriculum, takes time away from that initiative. It’s well-documented that non-readers of any age will respond to books fitting their interests. My own classroom experience radically changed when I incorporated twenty minutes of silent reading into the daily class routine. Reading a book changed their attitudes about school and their place in it. Many went from potential drop-outs to seeing themselves as having the ability to succeed. Reading for pleasure is documented to make youngsters more empathetic, imaginative, grow cognitively, and long-term longitudinal data suggests it provides them with access to social mobility: (https://www.edutopia.org/article/benefits-reading-pleasure/).
 
So why hasn’t it been fully adopted? If you’re a teacher or principal you know why. Instructional time is entirely scripted to curriculum and methodology that, unfortunately, hasn’t produced results.
 
We also have to stop relying on content heavy texts as the driver of classroom instruction. When teachers are asked to list the essential core concepts to be learned in a course, they tend to recite what the curriculum and textbook are focused on, rather than the needs of the learners in front of them.
 
Many compassionate teachers leave the profession because the constant move to turn the textbook page frustrates them and their students. It’s like a motivated salesperson expecting to do well each day only to find by the end of the week that she is selling something no one wants. In class, this translates into students who don’t want to learn and teachers having to deal with the resulting non-learner behaviors. Why not have teachers at every grade and content level cull multiple copies of subject matter books—fiction, non-fiction, biography, and autobiography--that their students can choose to read and then spend fifteen minutes a class to read them? Surely, student lead discussions about their book choice can enhance the learning of the content. The blowback, of course, has been that this hamstrings, “instructional time,” but does everything need to be taught and tested?


Obviously, what goes on in a students’ minds when afforded time to read is much more consequential than teaching all the ways to decode text to non-readers. Do we sell tires to people with don’t own cars? Braces to those with straight teeth? Yet we persist in covering loads of content most of which we never remember, and committed to testing that tells us what we already know, students who are not school ready struggle all through the years. Truly, what is testing meant for—to determine student learning, what was taught, teachers, administrators, community support, or all?
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Let’s drop testing and the scripted curriculum that goes with it. Let’s make schools real learning communities by rethinking what’s best for students and teachers instead of standardized, swaying goalpost standards. How about putting the millions that go into testing, curriculum, and teacher training into reconstructing schools as a true learning community? In the next post, I’ll try.