Are you REALLY reading?

As a kid, I LOVED to read. At bedtime, my Dad would always read my favorite picture books to me and it became my favorite part of my day. As I got older, my mom got me hooked on the local library and I’d spend days sitting and reading chapter books. Reading became an escape from reality where I could dream and imagine- I loved that feeling!

As a teacher, I shared my love of reading with my students. I brought in my treasured collection of Berenstain Bear picture books to add to our classroom library. They learned to love them too. After all of these years, I still love to read! During independent reading, you could catch me reading books for Educators.

No matter how much I loved reading and modeled this love of reading to my students, not every student was sold on the idea. In fact, many students dreaded reading.

Why?

Required Compliance

I am guilty as can be for assigning timed reading for homework. My students had to record 20 minutes of nightly reading in a reading log that I checked every morning.

Compliance.

I thought that by requiring students to read that I would meet my own requirements as a teacher to the state and repetition of reading may create a life long habit that in turn created an increase in learning. #EpicFail. I know.

Students were reading who knows what for who knows how long and “someone” vouched for that behavior by signing next to the daily log. This was not translating into a love of reading or an increase in achievement. They were not REALLY reading.

I decided I needed a better way to help students develop good reading habits but instead of just checking it off their to do list for the day, they actually would spend time thinking about what they read  Even better than thinking about their reading was writing about their reading.

So, I took that horrible reading log and expanded on it so that students had to write about their reading using key concepts we had been learning about, like main idea or cause and effect. It was a shortened version, but the recycling of skills on a daily basis was what helped solidify knowledge and increase proficiency. As weird as I found it, students loved this way to show off their reading and I had a better idea of where my kids struggled and excelled. #winwin

Snag my expanded reading log here.

Required Outputs

Similar to the above, requiring students to complete the same dreaded reading assignments does not ensure students are REALLY reading.

I use graphic organizers all of the time in the classroom.  But having students fill out a flow map or bubble map in reading groups creates a “hurry up and fill it out” mentality rather than reading to understand – the whole point of a graphic organizer.

Varying the methods and depth to which students respond to what they are reading will cure the dreaded required output dilemma. Sometimes my students wrote page long reading responses to a prompt and other days they filled out a graphic organizer.  Some days my students wrote a quick summary of major events and other times they compared character perspectives and motives.  My students loved to write about reading when it wasn’t predictable in type, length and depth.

Required Measurements

What was worse though for students was required reading assessments for both fluency and comprehension. Nothing is a kill joy more than an assessment. I love to walk my dog,  but if it were a test I’d stop doing it and surely despise it – even if it were to help me in the long run.

As s teacher, it took me some time to learn how to informally assess students in any and all subjects in a way that I collected accurate and specific data.  It was a challenge because I needed a common text and question set to ensure the results were fair. But what I found was that too much assessment created pressure on kiddos and their love of reading dwindled- as did their proficiency. They were not REALLY reading. The more I talked 1:1 or in small groups with students about what they read, I realized just how deeply the students were reading. I was able to guide their thinking to develop skills like foreshadow and antagonist motivations.  Over time, these precious moments became so valuable to my instruction and student success I couldn’t NOT assess in this informal way.

Want to try it?

Snag my simple meeting tracker here.

What I have learned is that students can and will read. They also can and will fall in love with reading in time. But most importantly, they can and will REALLY read- for pleasure and understanding. It’s up to us educators to bridge the gap and inspire the love of reading.

How do you ensure students love to read AND comprehend what they are reading at a deep level?