Literacy For All Everyday - No Excuses, No Exceptions

by Education Blog

---

Posted on August 29, 2022

---

Have you ever heard a teacher or a parent say the following? Your student reads very well, but they struggle with comprehension. Or My kid reads well, but they don’t comprehend well. I am sure that you have heard that or you may have even said that in the past. The key to improving our test scores and overall educational outcomes in all subject areas is embedded in those comments. Most people in the general public see those comments as two separate things. The perception is that reading is a simple task of sounding out words. Those are only the foundational starting points for reading, Teaching reading is really an ongoing process throughout a student's educational career in all subject areas. The reality is that a student is not reading if they don’t comprehend because reading is really defined as a repetitive thinking process. Reading is thinking.

Starting in the fourth grade, the type of reading that is required of students continues to get more sophisticated, and it is related to specific subject areas. Students don’t automatically know how to cope with this increase in rigorous reading materials. Some students learn to “fake” it. They simply sit in the back of the room and wait for one of the “smart” kids to answer all of the questions. They learn to get by, but the problem is that students then have to take state mandated tests or college entrance exams. At that point, there isn’t anyone blurting out answers. In essence, students are merely going through the motions of reading if they are not thinking about the meaning in the literature they read. So how do we improve a student's ability to read the more and more complex reading tasks as they get older?

We must explicitly teach our students how to think while they read. What are our strategies for teaching a student to think and make meaning of what they are reading? Have you ever read something and thought, “I don’t know what I just read?” Sure you have. We all have had that feeling. It isn’t enough to tell a student to reread that selection and concentrate harder. What does “concentrate harder” even look like anyway? The good news is that we don’t have to accept that our student isn’t a good reader. We can put strategies in place to help them make sense of what they are reading. That is indeed what our teachers are learning about right now.

The teachers at Lincoln are currently working through a book study geared toward adolescent reading strategies. The book is called “I Read It, But I Don’t Get it.” by Cris Tovani. Teachers will be reading a chapter each week. The teachers then get opportunities to discuss the book in small group and whole group settings in faculty meetings and PLC meetings once a week. They will be learning about schema (reader’s existing knowledge that helps them make sense of new information), asking questions about the text before, during, and after reading, drawing inferences, monitoring their own comprehension, “fix-up” strategies when meaning breaks down, and synthesizing information to create new thinking.

Now, if reading is a repetitive thinking process, how do you know when a student is thinking? When a teacher is teaching, how can the teacher determine if the student is thinking? Or if the student is just nodding in agreement to fake their compliance with the teacher’s lesson? The only real way to know if a student is thinking is through the writing process. “....Most aren’t adequately aware that high-order, analytical thinking likely isn’t possible without engaging in some form of writing, or that we can literally ‘write our way’ into a deeper understanding of complex texts or concepts that previously mystified us (Zinnser, 1988).” In short, good readers write about what they have read.

This year at Lincoln Elementary, teachers will be guiding students through daily reading comprehension activities that include short “writing to learn” activities. They will also be teaching a large essay project in each of the four main subject areas at different points in the year. Students will have written four essays with five paragraphs each on a variety of topics. Our goal through this project is to build classrooms full of thinkers. This type of instruction has been attempted in other districts with great results. We are all excited about tackling this project and the results that we expect to see this year and in the future.

Yours in education,

Shane Feely

District Curriculum Coordinator

 

---