A reading autobiography told in parts: Part I

I remember books, readily available, always plentiful: gifts of books, hand-me-down books, library books.

"Pretend" reading

I remember adults reading. Mom and Dad always reading.

I remember being read to and me reading to, which I now understand is “pretend" reading.

Later, in first and second grade, I continued to read to my parents, but this time it was “for real” reading.

This was the book!!

On one of these occasions, I recall reading aloud from one of my Scholastic chapter books (the kind you bought using the book order form passed out by your teacher), when my father, who was watching over my shoulder, stopped me in mid-sentence to show me how to read italics. He pointed to the italicized word and repeated it aloud, demonstrating how it should sound in the sentence. He said something like, “The author does that when the word is important. He wants you to say the word with feeling.”

My father's explanation opened up a whole new state of awareness for me: meaning is derived from more than the words themselves, but also how they are arranged and formatted on the page, as well as how I choose to say and interpret them.

This is but one of many interactions in which my parents transmitted their love of books and reading to me. They demonstrated that reading is much more than simply matching sounds to symbols. It’s a process of listening, speaking, and being in relationship with others.

A reading autobiography told in parts: Part I

Starting the conversation about connected reading

This semester in my undergraduate content-area literacy courses, I am piloting ideas from Turner and Hick’s (2015) Connected Reading: Teaching Adolescent Readers in a Digital World. 

Connected reading "is a model that situates individual readers within a broader reading community and acknowledges a variety of textual forms, both digital and print” (p. 5). Connected reading is NOT the same as online reading because the emphasis is on digital practices, not digital text. 

Turner and Hicks explained, “In short, we see that readers are connected to one another in increasingly useful ways and that they make meaning of what they read in various ways through their connections” (pp. 5-6). 

Turner and Hicks' book is based on research conducted in 2013 with 12 middle and high school teachers and several hundreds of students from across the country. At the end of their book, they summarize several implications for teaching and learning, beginning, of course, with teacher learning: “A shift in thinking about the nature of reading requires that educators talk with one another about the practices of real-world readers, not just the limited skills that are tested or the standards that can be linked to instruction” (p. 139).

I interpret this as further evidence that new literacies education must be integrated in teacher preparation programs. 

I already survey my students’ attitudes and predispositions toward digital technology, and I require them to sample several new digital tasks, texts, and tools each semester. What’s different this semester is I am trying to take a more deliberate and stepwise approach by implementing some of the same lessons and tasks that Turner and Hicks used with their participants, beginning with the “Who am I as a (digital) reader?” lesson (pp. 101-102).

The lesson follows the administration of a “Digital Reading Survey.” I took several of the questions from the Turner and Hicks survey and combined them with my pre-existing Interest Inventory and Literacy Diagnostic created with Google Forms. 

I like Google Forms because A) it aggregates the data into easy-to-read representations, B) it allows me to send a link to the teacher-learners so they can complete the inventory on their own time outside of class, and C) FREE.

Once the data is assembled in one place, the teacher-learners are prompted to study the data and make some observations. The idea is to develop a critical and reflexive stance toward “texts, contexts, and attributes that influence reader choices” (p. 100).

We did this on Day 1 of the Fall 2016 semester.

I sent out the link to the form about five days in advance of our first class meeting. Then, on the first day of class, I performed an adaptation of the lesson described on pp. 101-102 of Connected Reading. I taught the same lesson to teacher-learners across two different sections of my content-area literacy course.

Two interesting observations were shared as a result of this exercise.

First, several teacher-learners noticed that a majority of their peers preferred reading on paper over reading on a screen, while an inverse proportion reported going online “several times a day.” If they don’t like screen-reading, what are they doing online several times a day? Presumably some of that time online involves reading, which underscores the idea that I have long advocated that personal preference is not the only “attribute” that mediates our reading choices. We live in a hyper-connected 21st-century context that demands a fair amount of flexibility on our part to move with ease (if not always with pleasure) between mediums.

Next, we noticed that approximately the same number of respondents (an identical percentage, in fact, in one section) said A) they read less because of electronic devices and B) these tools should not be used in reading instruction. This prompted one student to wonder if the same students who read less on devices are the ones who don’t believe digital tools can be used to improve reading skills. Similarly, of those students who said they read more because of digital/mobile devices, how many of those same students agree they should be used to teach reading?

Lots of ideas for item analysis and data disaggregation!

There are some things I will do differently next time to improve this lesson: 

• I like the idea of prompting a reflection from students about “the ways they read each day” before they actually complete the form. After the form, the students are prompted to reflect again on “what I realized about myself as a reader as I answered the survey questions” (p. 101). The pre- and post-reflections can then be compared. However, I am not sure how to elicit the pre-reflection when I am already asking students to complete the form before the first day of class.
•  I need to be more intentional about presenting the data set as “text” and modeling, by way of a teacher-directed think-aloud, my process of meaning-making through close reading of text. This is my first opportunity to reinforce key concepts presented in the NCTE policy brief Reading Instruction for All Students, which is mandatory first-day reading. The brief provides a nice overview of the highly contested terms “text complexity” and “close reading,” which were brought to the reading education foreground by the Core Standards. My students, many of whom were in high school when the standards were first being adopted and implemented, often come into the teacher education program with vague and misguided understandings of these terms. 
•  I can further scaffold the teacher-learners by providing prompts and cues similar to  the “Looking at Data” protocols used in school reform initiatives.

Starting the conversation about connected reading

What are the "stumbling blocks" in reading education?

"Full Alphabet With Numerals" by David Castillo Dominici   

from freedigitalphotos.net

A New York Times article titled In Raising Scores, 1 2 3 is Easier than A B C provides an interesting
discussion about differences in math and reading instruction and why reading instruction is more challenging.

But the final quote in the article from a reading teacher encapsulates the real issue in reading education:

"I don't think there is very much research out there to say that when you can take a student who is impoverished and dramatically behind, that you can fix it in three years," said Mr. Javsicas, the seventh-grade reading teacher, who also coordinates special education at Troy Prep. "But I do think the signs seem fairly positive that if we can take kids from kindergarten and take them through 12th grade, I think we can get there."

Actually, there is research (lots of it) that shows reading development can be accelerated by teachers in high-needs schools, no matter what the child's background or SES. Allington (2009) addresses this straight on in the opening pages of What Really Matters in Response to Intervention: Research-based Designs. For a study in secondary literacy intervention, check out Brozo & Hargis (2003).

The problem is not "fixing" kids. The problem is fixing instruction and, before that, teacher attitudes. It makes no difference that Mr. Javsicas is a charter school teacher in New York state. Sentiments like his are just as common among public K-12 stakeholders (teachers, administrators, policymakers, parents, and the students themselves). 

Instructional reforms are hobbled by the none-too-subtle notion that there will always be some students who cannot learn. And, unfortunately, reading aloud from a common text, such as was described in the Times article, exacerbates this notion because it sets up students for failure. Reading, as one of the charter school executives points out, is a multidimensional task. It is not easily documented (much less, measured) through whole-group performances with inappropriate texts. Although Bridge to Terabitha is a fourth-grade level text, a host of factors may make it inaccessible, even for a fifth-grade reader.

References

Allington, R. L. (2009). What really matters in response to intervention: Research-based designs. Boston: Pearson.

Brozo, W. G., & Hargis, C. H. (2003). Taking seriously the idea of reform: One high school’s efforts to make reading more responsive to all students. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 47(1), 14–23.

What are the "stumbling blocks" in reading education?

Rewriting Identities (Hall, 2012)

This commentary by Leigh A. Hall in the February 2012 issue of the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy was especially helpful to me as I thought about the composition of my letter to students.

Rewriting Identities: Creating Spaces for Students and Teachers to Challenge the Norms of What It Means to Be a Reader in School - Hall - 2012 - Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy - Wiley Online Library

Rewriting Identities (Hall, 2012)