I have been following a series of articles in the New York Times addressing the future of reading and reading instruction. A New Assignment: Pick the Book You Like, the fourth in the series, has sparked some very powerful discussion. The article highlights a long standing tug-of-war between fostering the love of reading while still teaching the skills, strategies, and competencies of the process.
To illustrate the importance of both goals, classroom teacher, Lorrie McNeill, describes how she was able to reach the reading standard through a reading workshop approach which includes letting students choose their own books rather than requiring all students to read books from the list of traditionally mandated titles considered to be classic literature.
The Times story positions the workshop approach as a “movement” with potential to “revolutionize” the way reading is taught;in-sighting yet another “phonics-whole language” like debate. Proponents on both sides are all a buzz ready to defend and debate the merits of “classical literature” vs. “Captain Underpants“.
There is no question that a reading revolution is in order, but it will not be the book students are holding in their hands that will define their success. Spending time going back and forth about which books are the “best” takes us away from the much larger and more complex issue of what we are having students do with those books. We can require every student to read To Kill A Mockingbird, but if all we ask them to do is define vocabulary words and answer a battery of questions proving that they remembered everything they read and heard; have they really “read” the classics?
This “meaning is optional” approach so commonly used to cover the skills of reading is certainly not the literary experience Shakespeare or Steinbeck had envisioned their words igniting. Flooding the classroom with comic books and hoping that competency will happen through osmosis is not the answer either. Love alone can not make a strategic reader. Powerful and deep reading takes practice, demonstration, and experience navigating complex texts and genre.
A reading revolution can and is occurring as gifted teachers are informed and explicit about the complex and dynamic nature of the literacy. It is in this discussion that we are able to communicate clearly to our students that being literate is more about WHO you are and WHAT you do than it is about what it is you hold in your hand.
- Reading WITHOUT Meaning – Part 1 of 4
- Reading WITHOUT Meaning – Part 2 of 4
- Teaching the Reader…not the Strategies
- Raising Middle School Reading Test Scores
- When Strategies Interfere with Strategic Reading
- Reading with the Writer in Mind
- How Do You Read?
Photo on Flickr by C-Trick
