(Page 35) “…volume (of reading) is linked to attaining the higher order literacy proficiencies.”
(Page 54) “…one of the greatest differences between college and high school was the sheer volume of reading and writing that was expected in college compared to what had been required in high school.”
I realize the voice of this chapter isn’t nearly as enjoyable as the other texts we have been reading, but I felt the information Allington provides is important for us all to know. I think this chapter would help anyone who doubts our school-wide SSR to understand the importance of the program. Many of our lower-income students have so many responsibilities outside of school that they don’t have time to read; I know I’ve taught those who have to work to help pay bills around the house or have to tend to younger siblings once they go home. But those same students will read if they’re given the time to do so at school. I know I’m guilty of not reading as much since having children (other than picture books, of course) because there’s just so much I’ve got to get done once I get home. I definitely used to be one of those people who thought that teachers who incorporated SSR in their classes were just trying to keep the students busy so they didn’t have to get up and teach something. Boy, was I ever wrong! When implemented correctly, SSR is invaluable; I can’t imagine not having it as part of my regular class routine. My only fear (okay, not my only one, but one of them) about the school-wide SSR is that some teachers will cut SSR out of their classes because they feel like the students have already done it for the day. I think we can see from this chapter that we can’t have students read too much! I remember last year a student coming back from his first year at college (I won’t reveal any names, but this was not one of my resource students—he was an honors/AP student) who said he didn’t feel like he had been prepared to college. Perhaps if as a school we increased our reading and writing expectations, our students will feel more than prepared when going to college. I remember my senior year in high school I had to turn in an extensive essay every two weeks to my English teacher. He told us we would hate him for it at the time but would appreciate it when we went off to college. Boy, was he ever right! (Nicole—did you have this same teacher at Northeast??? He’s still there.) I was extremely appreciative that I had him for a teacher and felt bad for those who didn’t. If only all of my high school teachers had been more demanding of reading I would have done much better my freshman year of college. I was pretty overwhelmed by all I had to do. I’ll save you the abysmal details, but on the bright side I wasn’t put on probation. :-) Do y’all have any ideas as to how you think we could raise the reading and writing requirements for our students throughout the school?
(Page 54) “…one of the greatest differences between college and high school was the sheer volume of reading and writing that was expected in college compared to what had been required in high school.”
I realize the voice of this chapter isn’t nearly as enjoyable as the other texts we have been reading, but I felt the information Allington provides is important for us all to know. I think this chapter would help anyone who doubts our school-wide SSR to understand the importance of the program. Many of our lower-income students have so many responsibilities outside of school that they don’t have time to read; I know I’ve taught those who have to work to help pay bills around the house or have to tend to younger siblings once they go home. But those same students will read if they’re given the time to do so at school. I know I’m guilty of not reading as much since having children (other than picture books, of course) because there’s just so much I’ve got to get done once I get home. I definitely used to be one of those people who thought that teachers who incorporated SSR in their classes were just trying to keep the students busy so they didn’t have to get up and teach something. Boy, was I ever wrong! When implemented correctly, SSR is invaluable; I can’t imagine not having it as part of my regular class routine. My only fear (okay, not my only one, but one of them) about the school-wide SSR is that some teachers will cut SSR out of their classes because they feel like the students have already done it for the day. I think we can see from this chapter that we can’t have students read too much! I remember last year a student coming back from his first year at college (I won’t reveal any names, but this was not one of my resource students—he was an honors/AP student) who said he didn’t feel like he had been prepared to college. Perhaps if as a school we increased our reading and writing expectations, our students will feel more than prepared when going to college. I remember my senior year in high school I had to turn in an extensive essay every two weeks to my English teacher. He told us we would hate him for it at the time but would appreciate it when we went off to college. Boy, was he ever right! (Nicole—did you have this same teacher at Northeast??? He’s still there.) I was extremely appreciative that I had him for a teacher and felt bad for those who didn’t. If only all of my high school teachers had been more demanding of reading I would have done much better my freshman year of college. I was pretty overwhelmed by all I had to do. I’ll save you the abysmal details, but on the bright side I wasn’t put on probation. :-) Do y’all have any ideas as to how you think we could raise the reading and writing requirements for our students throughout the school?
12 comments:
There were a few quotes that specifically stood out to me in this reading.
“In other words, replacing whatever went on in the classrooms with added reading time was just as effective as, or more effective than, traditional instruction in enhancing reading comprehension performance.”
“Thus, contrastive studies of classroom experiences consistently indicate that lower-achieving readers simply read less during the school day than their higher-achieving peers, spending more instructional time on other activities.”
“Struggling fourth-graders may need as much as 3-5 hours a day of successful reading practice to ever hope to catch up with their more proficient peers.”
In a nutshell, everyone needs more time reading. We only become better readers by reading more. And I agree with what this article says. It’s not so easy to pin-point down a certain number of books or pages that we should read in a certain amount of time to magically become better readers. However, as we read more, and as we set certain goals to accomplish, we will naturally become better readers. Then there’s a catch. I teach many students who are behind academically compared to their national peers. I realize the importance of reading, especially to these kids, but because they’re oftentimes behind and need more assistance, I do, honestly, find myself easily giving more reading time to their advanced peers instead of them. It is during this time that I try to play catch-up with them. It’s so much easier to find them in need of help with instructional activities and to pull from some of the independent reading time I had created for them. But I have to remember this article…reading creates better readers. It’s not the strategies we try to teach as much as the actual time practicing reading that is really going to influence my students. Even though I feel that giving them reading time (when I feel we’re not accomplishing much) is sometimes taking away from other things we need to get done, I have to remind myself that this reading time is some of the most precious instruction they can be given.
Diane, in response to what you wrote—I always made sure last year, with my ninety minute classes, to have twenty minutes of SSR every day. It seems like it’s so much harder to manage 45 minute classes with SSR. I hate that! But I love that we’re having school-wide SSR. I sometimes went bananas with my Reading and Writing Workshop groups because I had them first semester and second semester for English I…ninety minutes a day…all year. However, I felt like I accomplished so much more with them than I do with my kids this year. I had them longer, and I could work on reading skills and still allow them that necessary time to read!
What do you say when your students say, “I don’t like to read”, “Why do we have to read everyday”, and “Why is it so important that we read?” There were other complaints I won’t mention. These were some of my responses: “Reading is power, the more you read the better you can become”, “You become more knowledgeable about different subjects and “You can gain so much more in life.”
I’m going to take parts of this article and use it as a minilesson to share and read to my students about why it is so important to read. I would like to see what responses I will get from the students. I will have them respond in their journals, to “What Changes Can We (Students/Teachers) Make to Implement a More Positive Solution to Improving Reading in Our Schools and Themselves.” By taking parts of this article, I want to make my students aware of what it takes to become better and productive readers. Adults know to be proficient at something it takes practice, some how we must relate this to our students when it comes to reading. The article states, “More recently, John Guthrie (2004) has demonstrated that increasing practice is associated with increased expertise across a variety of human proficiencies. In other words, when researches contrast the experiences of a professional basketball player and a youth basketball player, they find that the typical professional practices and plays basketball far more frequently than the typical ten year old playing on a youth team. World-class concert cellists, or chess players, or ballerinas practice far more than less skilled individuals. He notes that across these diverse areas, experts practiced twenty-five hours a week – a 500 percent difference. In reading, he noted, the research shows that our more proficient fourth-grade readers engage in reading at least two and one-half hours a day of reading, whereas our poorest readers read for about a half hour a day, if that –a 500 percent difference.” “Guthrie suggests that if we are attempting to accelerate struggling readers’ development, a critical first step will be at least equalizing the volume of reading practice. In many cases, simply equaling the volume of reading done by better readers will not be sufficient; we will need to ensure that struggling readers read more than better readers. Struggling fourth graders may need as much as 3-5 hours a day of successful reading practice to ever hope to catch up with their more proficient peers.” These statements were very profound in content and application to me; it makes me wish that I can start over again as a teacher, some 30 years ago.
This article provides us with evidence and demonstrations of what an effective teacher does to generate and increase literacy in the classroom. Also, it modeled for us how schools could be effective by eliminating ineffective processes and utilizing meaningful classroom management to improve and produce high literacy rates for our country. The questions for us all are how will we combat and improve literacy in our classrooms? What can we do to convey the concepts of this article and influence our politicians, school boards, and fellow teachers to positively minimize this critical problem?
I love the idea of 20 minutes of SSR...but it is very difficult to manage the classroom at times. I know how important it is for my students to really be engaged in reading during this time so I try to encourage them to read. However, I have one student who is continually disruptive during this time. I think he has read a total of 20 minutes during the entire school year during the school-wide SSR. It is difficult for me to set an example when I am constantly trying to manage this disruptive student. It becomes a three ring circle trying to get him to stay in his seat and remain quiet for 20 minutes. I've almost given up trying to read myself during this time. I usually get maybe 5-10 minutes of my reading accomplished. A lot of the students in that class are avid readers and would really like the time to read, but I am frustrated by the one student who seems to make it extremely difficult for his classmates to focus and read. Diane, do you have any suggestions for trying to get this student concentrated on reading during the SSR time?
Amanda--tell me more about this student. What does he do outside of school? What are his interests? Perhaps we need to find something for him that he would actually enjoy reading so it won't seem like such a chore. I firmly believe there's something out there that everyone enjoys reading. Everyone may not be book readers, but there are magazines and newspapers that appeal to every interest!
As I read through the early portions of this chapter, I kept hearing Allington say that ‘replacing whatever went on in classrooms with added reading time was always beneficial in enhancing reading comprehension performance.’ I took this to mean ‘adding silent reading time’ and kept wondering what this did for LD students who simply sit and stare at pages until the time is up rather than read. I was seriously doubting my basic approach to teaching low achieving, reluctant readers. And then I finally got to the paragraph that mentioned a reanalysis of the data from a study that suggested that oral reading time had a greater impact on achievement for LD students than did silent reading time. It is so obvious that when students are required to participate in reading, they become better readers! Simply adding silent reading time for students who will not read silently, will not make them better readers. I felt so much better about the oral reading that goes on in my classroom, that I could read the rest of the chapter and simply substitute ‘silent OR oral reading’ in place of ‘reading’. And I really believe that it is important to restructure the school day to carve out uninterrupted time for reading and writing. I love the 90 minute block schedule for the amount of time it provides for uninterrupted reading and writing time. And sometimes even 90 minutes does not seem to be long enough. I will mention that I worked in an elementary school where we did restructure the school day somewhat. The staff voted, and the school board allowed us to then lengthen the day for all students by 30 minutes, move band and orchestra to after school, cut 5 minutes from recess, and limit pull outs by special services staff. Those changes (along with others) really did make a difference in student achievement.
And I like Deb's idea about doing a little mini lesson for the kids to show them the importance of practice in developing skills (especially for reading and writing). I just may do something like that also.... The kids hear me say it enough, but maybe research studies will help it to sink in!
I think that students can read a lot but if they are not reading correctly they will not gain new vocabulary skills. By reading correctly I mean looking up the words that they don’t know instead of reading over them. I think reading is very important in elementary schools. This is where students need to be taught to read and the skills to use when they come across words they don’t understand. I believe if students have the necessary skills to read then they will enjoy reading and will read more because they enjoy it. If reading is a struggle then it is not enjoyable and students will read less. As students move through the grades they need to be encouraged to read and allotted time to read. Students get involved in after school activities and get jobs in high school so they have less time to read outside of the classroom. I think students need t be allotted time in school every day to read. I don’t agree with the Whole-Day Plan. I think students will forget information because it is so long between the times they meet. Also I think the day would be boring just doing one subject all day long. I don’t see students doing well with that at all. Imagine them on the days in a subject all day that they hate. I think if students are taught correct reading skills at an early age and are encouraged through out they school years reading achievement would increase. Parents also need to encourage reading at home. Elementary schools can encourage and involve parents in reading while their children are young.
This chapter clearly proves that students must read in a larger volume if they are going to become and stay effective and successful readers. Though some of the statistics seems very steep in numbers (eg. "Struggling fourth-grades may need as much as 3-5 hours a day of successful reading practice to ever hope to catch up with their more proficient peers."), the analogy that went with it made sense. People who want to excel in athletics spend hours a day training. Therefore, people who want to excel in reading should spend hours a day reading until they are competent at it. Though it would be difficult to create a high school setting that allowed for 90 minutes of daily, undisturbed, actual reading, I think that our 3 times a week SSR is a step in the right direction. It allows a brief escape to the students who enjoy reading and are good at it. It also allows for uninterrupted time for growing readers to practice.
Hello, everyone, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
First, to answer your question, no, I never had that teacher, but I’m pretty sure I know which teacher you meant. I can’t remember his name…
Secondly, I have to agree with Amanda that my first thought about all his suggestions were: “What on earth would I do with them for that long?” The classroom management nightmare of it scares me. Most students would be fine, especially if it was a well established routine, but there are some students who simply refuse to do any work. And a time that they could possibly perceive as “down time”…
I liked his analogy on page 38, comparing the difference between a person who practices for a youth team versus a professional player. The difference was something like 500%! Also, he mentions at the beginning a study done by Krashen, noting that of 9 studies, 8 showed significant improvement with increased reading. Does this include achievement in non-literacy classes, as well?
I definitely agree that, as he says, if we want to “accelerate struggling readers’ development, a critical first step will be at least equalizing the volume of reading practice.” My main questions and concerns had to do with the management. It’s nice and sweet to recommend that time stated as “instructional time” be used as “instructional time.” But I highly doubt that students at this level will pay attention to announcements posted on a bulletin board or arrive before the bell, ready to learn. (I’m a bit skeptical this morning.)
Those were my thoughts.
I had a teacher like you Diane. We had this huge project where once a weekk for 16 weeks we were required to turn in at least two typed pages on different sections of our autobiographies. I hated it so much while doing it and thought it was the biggest waste of time. When I went to college and realized that two page papers every week are nothing, I was thankful I had previous experience. Looking back and reading my autobiography, I appreciate it more and more now.
I think there needs to exist a balanced combination of quality reading and writing, not just quantities of both. It's difficult to find something that your students want to actively read and write about, but it is possible. I agree that we need to be more concerned with reading habits than the quantity of what is being read, while having struggling readers read more than the average or above average readers. I've noticed that if I sit at my desk and read during silent reading, the kids get distracted and chatty. If I sit in front of them, they are more engaged. Whether its fear or me modeling is irrelevant because they are reading more. At the beginning of the year, they used to fight me on SSR and take 5-10min to get into it. Now they come in, get their books and get going. Practice and repetition does help.
In some respects, it seems like this excerpt reiterated some of the ideas we've previously covered concerning reading. I thought a lot about Jim Trelease as we read this article. One thing that stood out to me, as it seems to have with other classmates, was the amount of reading time that was suggested during the school day. There was the comment about stretching a novel out to six weeks because of the time it would take to incorporate activities...well, although I think 6 weeks is incredibly long, it took my CWP class quite a while to get through Frankenstein (in retrospect it was a week or two too long). However, the students needed the extra time/activities to understand the novel (so again, in retrospect, perhaps the wrong novel to have picked). But, how do you help struggling readers understand a text (perhaps one that isn't too difficult for them) and not incorporate activities (or minimize activities)? I feel like without the strategies to better reading-well, simply reading just can't be enough, can it? Or, if simply reading is enough, students often get bored after a certain amount of reading. If I were to spend 80 mins of every class reading, I would have half of my class asleep by the end of the block. While the excerpt did raise some good points and offer interesting ideas and solutions, I find I only have more questions about what was written than answers.
What Really Matters
B.Raines
I am certainly not qualified to teach anyone how to read, but I do believe that in many cases struggling readers have not developed habits that allow them to retain what they read. SSR is a great tool for students to practice reading, but if they do not take the initiative to look up words they don’t understand it is not as effective as it could be.
Maintaining order during SSR is no longer a problem in my class. I simply post the third block reading assignment to give them a choice. They can read anything they want to or they can read the assigned text. If they read the assigned text, when class starts they can move on to the next activity. Most of the time that means lab work. This has also decreased the number that try to sleep.
An on going problem in my classes is trying to get students to read the textbook. They are totally turned off to reading their textbook. I wish they would put as much time into reading as they did talking on the phone and text messaging. I would like to believe the reason they do not read their textbook is because of the vocabulary but that is not the case. They don't read because they think it is boring! Unfortunately for those who go off to college realize they can't get by anymore simply from listening to the professor lecture that they honestly must read. I know I was one of the hard heads. In high school I hated to read. I tried but I would often fall asleep and the things I did read were the ones we were tested on like "Old Man and the Sea" books like that the great literay works and wow how my English teacher droned on and on about the meaning of all of the symbolism in "The Great Gatsby". So in a way I can relate to our students. How do we get them to read? SSR is a great idea. I just wish I could build it into all of my US History classes. It would be wonderful if I could do snipets of literary works that relate to the topics we were covering in history. For example, reading pages out of the book "The Jungle" and relating it to the Progressive movement. If only................
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