Subjects Matter Ch. 12 Recommendations from Reading Research

In this chapter there was an immense amount of crucial information. But of these ten tips on what to read and how to read, two main ideas stood out me.

The first is the line, “Frustratingly, though, while choice is a major factor in students’ potential engagement, both the classroom opportunities for choice and access to a variety of books are very limited in most schools” (299). This felt like the biggest obstacle in many of the ideas from the past few chapters. For example, in a balanced-reading diet students should have more choice, in inquiry units students should fuel the inquiry and not to aid good readers, students should choose the book. What this makes me wonder is do we have the time, structure and resources in our education system to allow this much student choice? If not, is it something I can change to make sure I do have it in my classroom, my team and my school? How do we prepare our lessons and work with our school and local libraries to make sure students are doing more work than the teacher but that they have the proper support and resources necessary? Additionally, beyond just resources how do we ensure that in a typical high school where a teacher may have 100 students a day, every one of them is reading or involved in something they chose? I’m thinking this is something in an ELA class that could be solved using jigsaws, literature circles and independent reading. Are there any other ideas to allow more choice and still meet requirements?

The second thing that stood out to me in this chapter is something I’ve been hearing a lot about this year; teacher read-alouds. I love this idea primarily because it’s something I don’t remember ever happening in school past the age of- well as soon as the class could read.  While this chapter gave some great research behind why it’s helpful for readers to hear it and see a model, I’ve also been learning this idea of modeling in depth in my “Writing in Secondary Schools” class. This idea that we often show students finished models, a final essay, perfect reading, the successful science lab; but we rarely show them how we’ve failed along the way. And the fact is, by showing them mistakes, or simply processes and work we go through along the way, we create safe spaces- we actually model LEARNING. The very thing we want to happen. Learning is not the finished product, it is not the excellent reader- not that we don’t want both of these things in our classrooms- but learning is the process we take to get to the goals.  If we’re expecting our students to be life-long learners not life-long experts, then we must show them how and when we learn. This includes at the chapter mentioned, talking about what we’re reading. How great does that sound to go into your class and start a day off by taking a few minutes to tell your students about the article on foreign affairs you just read from NPR, or the scientific discovery just mentioned in TIME, or the culturally relevant historical novel. If we love our contents, if we chose them for a reason, are we still involved in them and are we showing our students we are?