(Page 36) “More recently we found the volume of reading students did during school to be one of the important differences between children’s experiences in more and less effective classrooms.”
I can’t imagine reading this chapter and not realizing the importance of having students read during school. I’m one who used to think that teachers who had students do independent reading in their classes were just wasting time because they didn’t want to teach, or the teacher had too much other stuff to do, so they had the kids read. (And I realize that is the reason some teachers do independent reading, but if done correctly, it is invaluable.) But the thing is if kids (especially the lower-level ones) don’t read at school, chances are they aren’t going to do it at home either. Some of them just rather do something else at home while others really are too busy to read. (How many of us know kids that work every night to help pay the bills at home? How about the kids who are pretty much in charge of taking care of their siblings?) Many of y’all know that’s one of the things that I miss most about being in the classroom—getting to read for 90 minutes every day with my students. I love to read, and I still have a hard time finding the time once I leave school. By giving students the time to read at school, they can learn the joy of reading while improving their skills simultaneously.
I can’t imagine reading this chapter and not realizing the importance of having students read during school. I’m one who used to think that teachers who had students do independent reading in their classes were just wasting time because they didn’t want to teach, or the teacher had too much other stuff to do, so they had the kids read. (And I realize that is the reason some teachers do independent reading, but if done correctly, it is invaluable.) But the thing is if kids (especially the lower-level ones) don’t read at school, chances are they aren’t going to do it at home either. Some of them just rather do something else at home while others really are too busy to read. (How many of us know kids that work every night to help pay the bills at home? How about the kids who are pretty much in charge of taking care of their siblings?) Many of y’all know that’s one of the things that I miss most about being in the classroom—getting to read for 90 minutes every day with my students. I love to read, and I still have a hard time finding the time once I leave school. By giving students the time to read at school, they can learn the joy of reading while improving their skills simultaneously.
A handful of y’all attended Tim Rasinski’s seminar last week on “Effective Teaching of Reading: From Phonics to Fluency.” On the first page of his handout he had a list of factors that discriminate the highly effective schools and less effective schools in literacy achievement. This was an international study involving over 30 countries. From over fifty factors, numbers two and three on the list were amount of reading done at home and amount of reading done in school. (Number one was parent involvement.) How ‘bout that? It doesn’t matter where in the world you live—reading is the primary thing that will increase a person’s literary achievement. I wonder if that would work in sports? (Excuse the sarcasm.) Do you think if a person practices more they’ll actually improve their athletic skills? Did you know that Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school varsity team? But he went home and PRACTICED and he got better at basketball. (I put that in there just to aggravate you, Pam!) If we give students time to practice reading in school, they will get better at it.
15 comments:
Ch. 2 What Really Matters: Kids Need to Read a Lot
By Richard L. Allington
Reading and Blog Due November 27, 2006
Andrea Baker; Media Specialist
Allington derides low-level reading, and includes “ten minutes of DEAR” in this criticism (p. 53). This is kind of depressing considering our school is making an effort to get 10 minutes per week of SSR off the ground. I know, baby steps have to come before a drastic paradigm shift. The gist of Allington’s concern is that students are not being tested on short, brief passages, but rather lengthier, more difficult passages. This is not the type of reading we are teaching in our schools. Also, “real life” reading involves reading for longer periods of time.
Just think… if SSR was expanded to one hour a week (pie in the sky, but hey, I dream big) we would be moving to the type of involved reading Allington describes in this chapter. Our students would get 36 practice rounds to get a feel for what it is like to get lost in a book!
I thought Allington’s research (p. 37) documenting how dramatically different the number of words a student is able to read orally versus the number of words a student is able to read silently makes for a compelling argument…. I agree with Diane. I used to have a somewhat negative view of SSR, but not after taking this class. I didn’t know what I didn’t know!
I was one of those students in high school during the 1970s “period of experimentation” Allington refers to on p. 54. My 11th grade English class was called “Independent Reading” and consisted on my reading whatever tradebooks I wanted and then making an appointment with the teacher and discussing the book for 5 minutes or so. The downside was that I never read a lot of the classics most students read in high school and scholarly literary criticism never factored into play. I think it could have been a great class if the teacher would have guided us to a variety of genres and insisted on a mix of the classics as well as contemporary fiction. My experience was all very flower power, Haight-Ashbury, and Woodstock!
Chapter Two What Really Matters: Kids Need to Read a Lot
Due November 27, 2006
Rita Malyerck
“The average higher-achieving students read approximately three times as much each week as their lower-achieving classmates.” I was impressed with the studies connecting the volume of reading with higher student achievements. I will definitely be onboard encouraging our students to read more during the school day. I wonder how much SSR is presently occurring at Airport in History classes, Science classes, English classes, etc..
If we expect higher standardize test scores and expect our students to succeed in college, more reading must occur. It is our job to make this happen, even if we need to restructure the school day. How about a delayed schedule once a week for reading? Students report to school at the normal time and go to homeroom or first block, but classes would be delayed for about one hour. I know there would be a lot of details to consider, but it sure would be interesting to see our results.
Y'all are making great comments!
Andrea, just a question...as an adult, did you ever decide to go back and read some of those classics???
So it seems that so far everyone who has posted is on board for SSR during the school day. How do y'all suppose we get the entire faculty to agree with this? Some folks aren't really thrilled with the 10 minutes a week we do SSR in homeroom (and we know that's not nearly enough!)...there might be a revolt if we required more! Ideas???
p. 41 "In other words, meeting these standards is the responsibility of all curriculum areas, not just the English or Language Arts teachers." Richard Allington said this in relation to the 25 books per year requirement of New York. I really wish more of our content area teachers would work with us on the ideas of SSR and read aloud. Today, in my two Academic Support II classes, I read aloud the editorial that JC sent us the link to. I asked my students afterwords what teachers other than me or one of their English teachers read aloud to them. Only a few people were mentioned, and the one mentioned the most is not here anymore. I am not the most faithful with read aloud, but I don't dare skip our 30 minutes of daily SSR.
p. 47- Not quoting but paraphrasing - He talks a lot about how to restructure the day to efficiently use our instructional time - I really think that we need to talk about this openly and honestly as a faculty. 90 minute blocks are great, but not if we don't use all 90 minutes. It is hard to teach that long, and it's hard for kids to sit that long. Again, read alouds, SSR, more interactive activities, discussions, etc. will help take up that time, and the students will learn, but teaching for 60 minutes and giving kids homework time for 30 minutes is not an efficient use of our instructional time. How can we justify not teaching bell to bell if we don't have 100% passing rate on HSAP and 100% graduation rate?
What Really Matters: Kids Need to Read a Lot
November 27, 2006
If this ever really happens, I will roll over in my grave! “…creating a schedule that supported dramatically increased quantities of reading during the school day” (p.35) and “a good first step in planning for improved reading achievement is reworking the organization for the school day so that teachers and children have all of the official instructional time for productive academic work” (p. 47) are two areas that hit me the hardest because I have thought about this since the day I started teaching. I love to read, not everyone does, and I understand that, but there are genres out there for everyone – they just have to find the ones they like – and READ! If we could restructure the school day around improving reading, then we will improve literacy overall. Last time when we read NCTE Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform, it pretty much summarized my feelings concerning developing the skills over a period of time, not just in primary school and reading class. All areas of content must join in the fight for literacy to achieve student success. This means (yes, I’m going to say it), reading is more important than any other area! If students can’t read on grade level, how in the world are they going to read a textbook in Biology that is written two grade-levels above them? We have a literacy coach for a reason – to help all teachers implement strategies to help all students! All teachers should be required by state law to take this class!
I love Rita’s idea about late start for reading! Wonderful…
I agree with Diane. Everyone’s comments are great! I’m glad Debi actually said it. Reading is the most important subject. And that’s not saying that English is. Janet Allen says that teaching reading is not the job of high school English teachers. We have our own subject area which is English language and literature. It’s like Allington said. ALL subject area teachers are responsible for promoting literacy and helping students become better readers. The bottom line (Diane, Kelly, and Pam) is that in order for kids to become better readers they have to read more and for longer periods of time. (That’s one reason why Rita’s idea is so good! They could read for an hour.) Reading more takes time, but not necessarily more time. We need not make the school day longer. Talk about a revolt! Scheduling that time into the schedule is possible, especially when the 90 minute block isn’t being used effectively in all classrooms. Why can’t we require all students to have a book (or other valid reading material) with them at all times? Then when s/he finishes classwork earlier than others, there’s always something for him/her to do. Also, students are used to seeing their English teachers read. How powerful would it be for them to see their math teacher or their CATE teacher or their coach read by choice! If we start some sort of delayed start for reading, why not send all the athletes to the arena to ready with their coaches? Or invite Coach Burnett into your classroom for SSR or a read aloud. He’s actually a voracious reader!
I agree with MCR that the section on restructuring of the school day was very interesting. The author has a very ideal view of schools and although that would be great and in a perfect world all would go that way, there is so very much to consider when we look at the school day. The author failed to count a lot of activities and tasks that unfortunately are things that we have to consider and do throughout the school day. In a perfect world his ideas would be wonderful.. but in the world we live in.. they don't appear very practical.
I am baffled that finding time to read at school has become such a problem. If we as teachers recognize the importance of giving our students time to read then when did it become to so hard to find that time? Pam’s comment about not teaching the full 90 minutes is right on target…maybe some of that time should be used to allow students to read. Many researchers have proven many times over that the more kids read the better readers they become and Diane is right, many of our students are not reading at home so they need to be given the time at school.
I still think AHS has a long way to come before we can give all of our students quality time to read during the day without “restructuring ” our entire schedule but the reading in homeroom on Thursdays is a great start!
When I read chapter 2 several things struck me. First, I agree that in order for the instructional environment to change the schedule must be changed to support this. Several teachers think this is a 'waste' of their instructional time, but I agree with Christy, this is something that all disciplines should incorporate into their curriculum. Also, like Andrea I'd love to see it expanded into a longer SSR period because I have seen how much my psychology students enjoy their book clubs and even my homeroom students are disappointed if the NIE newspapers aren't available on any given day. Like Claire mentioned, if we expect students to be better readers then we have to provide them the opportunity to actually read. Unfortunately, like Joni mentioned, alot of the kids don't have the home support to encourage 'additional reading' as we'd like to see. On a different note, it really struck me the difference in the number of words that children were exposed to when they were having to read themselves verses oral reading. It also is astonishing the difference in the volume of words that a high achieving student is exposed to verses a lower-achieving student and that there is definitely a correlation between the amount of reading students do in and out of school was positively related to their reading achievement. Seems like a no-brainer to me to include SSR into EVERYONE's curriculum not just the English teachers' classes.
When Kids Can't Read
What Teachers Can Do
Beers
Chapter 2
My favorite benefit of this course has been the addition of the "library" of young adult books in my classroom. During class I watch students check out books, read them, and pass them on to other students. I have students who come from other classes because they've heard that I have this book or that one. (Someone is asking for "Memoirs of a Geisha," but I don't have it.)
This semester I have one group of college prep students and two groups of communication students. All three classes begin with reading--silent reading. Some students choose books, some choose magazines, and some choose newspapers--but they all read. Some students don't want to put their books down. In fact, I never thought I'd say, "Put down your books, and take out your notebooks."
When the entire group of students settles into reading, I don't stop them until someone breaks the spell. I'll never forget one class during my first year of teaching. I had 14 yearlong English communication students, and we started reading...of course, I had been "teaching" them to read silently for weeks, but this day, they were quiet, and no one wanted to stop. As they continued to read, I began to quietly call students up to my desk for individual conferences, and before we knew it, the bell rang.
We could use the media center for extended reading...we could actually make Diane's reading room a reality. I dream big like Andrea! In my school days, when we went to the library, we spent the whole period there. I had time to really get into my favorite books: biographies.
This idea of extended time for reading could lead to extended time for writing, and before you know it, we'll have students choosing topics they want to know more about, and if you give them time to study their favorite topics in-depth, they'll want to write about those topics, and next thing you know, they'll want to publish what they've written so they can show others what they've learned...because they had the time to read.
Jimmy--do you think your kids were just born with a desire to read? I suspect they had some great modeling at home to instill that love. It's amazing to talk with kindergarten teachers and discover how many kids don't know how to hold a book and have never been read to.
What Really Matters: Kids Need to Read a Lot
As a teacher who has taught all grade levels, I find it interesting the emphasis that is placed on reading at the various levels of education. When I taught in the elementary schools in 2 different districts, reading was encouraged each day. There was SSR time built into the day. Many of my students in Berkeley County didn’t have access to books, other than at school, so reading was a priority for them at school. In Richland 2, we have reading contest. Students were encouraged to read both during SSR and outside of the classroom. Rewards were provided by the PTA and a big party with gold medals was given at the end of the year. At the middle school, some teacher encouraged SSR and others didn’t. If fact, my son got in trouble for reading when he was middle school student in this district! I think that we should have SSR included here at Airport. How we would incorporate it would be a different story, but maybe with next year’s changes in the freshman/sophomore schedules this could be done.
I began reading to Christopher the moment I brought him home from the hospital. This was a nightly ritual for us and when Lauren was born the ritual continued. I can’t tell you how many Scholastic books that I have bought! Both of my children also have their own library cards. I know that my children are an exception to the rule, and I know that my children haven’t always seen me setting a good example, now that they are older, but I hope that what I have taught them about the importance of reading will go with them as they continue their educations and become parents one day.
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