Where Should Students Learn To Love Reading?
Posted by meredith on 08-31-2009
Over the weekend The New York Times, reg. required, profiled an experimental teaching method that allows students to select their own reading material. The piece opened up an ongoing debate over the role of English teachers, and how the responsibility to create an environment that fostered a lifelong love of books compared with the need to build a foundation of a shared literary tradition.
I’d like to hear what educators and librarians, in particular, have to say on the topic and encourage their comments below. My personal (unprofessional) opinion is that within the classroom, there should be a balance struck between free choice and required reading. Because while empowerment and enthusiasm towards books is vital (more on that), so is the ability to critically analyze a text, in spite of a personal affinity towards the characters or the subject matter. No doubt, if I had the ability to opt out of reading Lois Lowry’s The Giver in seventh grade, a book I found too depressing and difficult to enjoy at the time, I would have done so without a second thought. I would have also missed out on engaging in one of the more challenging, but ultimately rewarding learning experiences from my middle school years. I probably also wouldn’t have appreciated its distant dystopic YA relative Hunger Games half as much as I did.
On that note, I thought it was interesting that the article didn’t mention any efforts outside of the classroom where the emphasis can be on discovering books for the pure pleasure of reading, i.e. at home or the local/school library. Basically anywhere where instructors other than teachers could complement in-class requirements with alternative fare whether that mean comic books, horror stories, YA chick lit or more advanced literature and/or non-fiction. Also, I wondered how the medium of educational television could play a role in this discussion? A timely question considering the recent end to a 26-year run of PBS’ “Reading Rainbow,” which according to Director John Grant in a recent NPR article was discontinued partially because of a shift in the philosophy of educational television programming that moved programming towards teaching kids how to read instead of why to read.
Sort of related:
The Crush of Summer Homework
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Categorized under: Books & Print
August 31st, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I am a librarian and a close friend of an High School English teacher who this year is moving her class over to the model where the students select their own reading material. I find this to be a fascinating turn in the education system. This allows for the teaching and reaching out to students at all levels in her classroom. Due to funding cuts and lack of teachers, she can have a class consisting of students with learning disabilities all the way through honor students in the same class time. To force everyone in the class to read the same material you also force the majority to loose interest very quickly by being over challenged or completely bored. She is still going to be instructing the basic structures of literature and how to interpret and understand it, but now the student will have vested interest since it will relate to a book of their own choosing and interest level.
Bravo for the education system to finally a get a clue and not try to standardize everyone into neat little boxes.
August 31st, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I am a teacher/librarian in a K-8 public school and I think both free choice and assigned reading have a place in school. Some books are truly too good to allow kids to pass them up. I work in a school with a high immigrant population and there is a huge problem with lack of background knowledge. This can be most easily remedied through shared reading. On the other hand, the research is quite clear that plenty of free choice reading is the key to learning to read and speak English and, I suspect, to love to reading, as well.If I really want to hook a class on a book I think is great, I just read some little snippets from the story to the class and then make it available for checkout. If they want to know the ending, the students must do some work, too. This always works for at least some of the students. So learning to love reading isn’t an assigned vs.free choice thing, but a both and situation.
September 1st, 2009 at 11:09 am
Free reading is only one part of learning to love reading.
The other part – one of the most important parts – is being able to talk about what you’re reading with other people. That’s the part I fear for.
There’s actually many people I know who read, but very few who I can hand a book to and say “I loved this. Read it and tell me what you think, because I have to talk about this with someone.”
September 21st, 2009 at 12:10 am
This website we created is a place where young people can recommend books to each other – lodge creative responses to reading, participate in online conversations with Young Adult authors, read first chapters, listen to an audio snippet, get YA book news and generally immerse themselves in reading culture. Join the other half a million visitors that love this site.
insideadog.com.au
Cheers,
Paula.