Official Blog 1: Fostering Reading in a Typical High School English Class

Our school has drifted away from a school-wide reading program. In the past, we had a 20-minute period each day for silent reading and for an English teacher it was great. Over time there were complaints that the program was being implemented in a haphazard way with some teachers allowing students to do homework instead or simply jumping into content for their classes citing a shortage of time to cover their curriculum.

As a result, most of the ways reading is encouraged in our school are through our English classes. In my own class, I try to encourage reading in my English classes in a number of ways.

(https://www.tomgauld.com/)

Motivation: Choice and Modeling
There is ample evidence (Ambe, 2007; Venegas 2017) that choice is a key tool in encouraging students to become stronger readers. Ideally, those choices should be in that Goldilocks range where they are within the students current reading level but pushing them a bit further as well. It is also important that the modelling of enthusiasm for reading be present in a student’s life if nowhere else through their teacher (Lesesne, T. S., 2017).

The first is to offer independent reading projects with lots of choice and I support students by doing lots of brief book talks on a variety of books (variety in all senses – genre, length, special focus, gender/race of author, etc.). I also try and get a sense of what types of stories resonate with students (through a survey on the types of books, movies and TV they like at the beginning of the course) and try and slip a few choices in specifically to target the students I know to be reluctant readers. The idea is to jump start their motivation by letting them choose where to start.

With my younger students (Grade 8s and 9s), I introduce them to a fairly sizable pile of books because choice paralysis is one of the problems for reluctant readers. If you don’t read, how in the world do you unpack the choice given to you by the thousands of books in the library. I try to be equally effusive in my book talks about the books I am introducing regardless of the length, genre or reading level so that no one feels shortchanged by choosing a book I introduced.

I do alter this for two categories of books. For horror, I always tell students how much I dislike the horror genre as it scares me and is, therefore, wrong. This, oddly, gets students who like horror MORE excited by the horror options (A comment like, “This one is really horrible. I couldn’t sleep for two nights afterwards. I don’t think anyone should read it.” will usually get quite a line up). I also choose a few more difficult books and say, “You may want to read this if you want a challenge, but it is probably a bit difficult for your age and deals with serious issues”. This approach also seems to attract readers. Of course, I use other strategies with my older readers (Grades 11 and 12) but this works for 8s and 9s pretty well. (Here’s a great blog about book talks focused on reluctant readers including a few examples from children’s book authors: https://ontarianlibrarian.com/2020/08/02/engaging-reluctant-readers-during-book-talks/)

I don’t do formal conferencing around their independent reading, but I do talk with them informally about what they are reading to get a sense of what they enjoy about a book (particular, if I see or suspect that a student is struggling. Sometimes having them explore their thoughts with you reassures them that they are doing fine) and will usually have 4-5 classes during an independent unit, when students will group up and share about their books so far (best scene so far, most interesting character, biggest reveal, etc. – low barrier/high interest types of discussions).

All of this is to get students engines going so they get comfortable about the idea of reading.

Relevance
It is always helpful for students to have a personal connection to the narratives we explore. This can be direct, as in stories set in milieus that the students are familiar with or with topics that are tied up in the issues affecting the students’ world (Grasso, M., 2016). In the case of a classroom in a large multicultural city like Vancouver that means a diversity of perspectives and experiences.

I also like to have at least one literature circle unit each year to create a bridge between independent reading and a class wide study. Students are given a series of choices but from a limited set of novels and after a brief book talk, we go through a process of deciding who reads what with student choice being the main deciding factor.

The books are usually similar in some fashion. In the past year, my English 11s chose between Indian Horse (about residential schools and hockey), The book of Negroes (about the African-American/Canadian experience of going through slavery) and The Jade Peony (about growing up in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1930s and 40s). Each book was quite different and offered a range of difficulty in reading (Indian Horse being the shortest and The Book of Negroes almost 2-3 times as long) but they all explored the trauma of racism in Canada and finding oneself despite that trauma. They also happen to all be fantastic and eminently readable books. This set of books are always available in our bookroom and often used but, certainly, part of the choice this year had to do with the need to talk about issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement.

In their groups, each person tackled a different role each session and the roles were designed to help students explore the book in different ways and support their reading. Because of shared themes, it also allowed for the groups to talk to each other about the novels they were reading in the context of what they were hearing from other groups. In this way, the literary circles were built to scaffold students’ abilities to explore not just their novels but their novels in a context of other stories which gets them used to the idea they are not just readers but that they are a valid part of a bigger world of ideas.

Benefits of non-prescriptive approach to developing reading skills
I don’t, generally, have students do pull out or targeted skills-based reading work at the high school level. I would rather have the students experience the joys of being involved in real discussions about literature that should help fill in some of the comprehension gaps while using other mediums to also help support their understanding of text. This seems key to students developing their sense of self-efficacy especially once they enter adolescence which is key to developing their motivation to read further and if they begin to read on their own, much of the battle is won (Venegas, 2018).  

Beyond this are full on novel studies. With those I try and frontload as much context as I can or develop a series of small projects that help students do that for themselves. I also try and bring in other works from different forms to help develop that context. For a study of Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (a novel about the experience of being a regular soldier in World War I on the German side), I use the film Joyeux Noel and sections of Jacques Tardi’s graphic novel, It Was The War of The Trenches to give students other ways of understanding the context and visualizing the world of the novel (both works are excellent and students tend to find them quite powerful). Both those works also took the view of regular soldiers on different sides of the conflict to help students compare the differences in experiences for everyday soldiers on all sides (not much difference). We then look at themes through the three works. This helps as with the literature circles to connect the world of the book to a larger world of literature and by using a variety of types of narrative, it allows students who are struggling a bit as readers to lean a bit more of their analysis on a visual medium.

References

Ambe, E. B., Inviting Reluctant Adolescent Readers into the Literacy Club: Some Comprehension Strategies to Tutor Individuals or Small Groups of Reluctant Readers. Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literature, 50(8), p. 632-639.
Fast, K. (n.d.). Engaging Reluctant Readers During Book Talks. Ontarian Librarian. https://ontarianlibrarian.com/2020/08/02/engaging-reluctant-readers-during-book-talks/
Grasso, M. (2016). The Importance of Multicultural Literature. Schools Catalogue Information Service, 96. https://www.scisdata.com/connections/issue-96/the-importance-of-multicultural-literature/
Lesesne, T. S. (2017). Chapter 2: Listening to their voices: what research tells us about readers. Reading by Right. Facet Publishing.

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