Results of a survey on independent reading

I asked one of my ninth grade classes to write my a quick note about how independent reading went for them this year. I asked specifically about how they felt about independent reading, how it had changed, if at all, over the course of the year, and what they foresaw for the future. A few kids were absent; I got thirteen responses.  Two were weakly positive; two were strongly negative, and nine were strongly positive.

I expected to get more responses like the two that were weakly positive, saying that reading "wasn't bad" but not granting that it was actually good.  Instead, most students seemed pretty enthusiastic.  Maybe they were just saying what I was obviously hoping they would say, but I like to think they were really pretty happy to get an English class that gave them a lot of time and encouragement to read what they were interested in.  The strongly negative responses were perhaps the most interesting.  One of the kids read quite a bit (a couple dozen books), and the other read very little (four or five books).  But both predict they will never read voluntarily.  This is probably true.  The tone of these comments is a bit defiant ("Reading didn't actually change my year in any way whatsoever"; "independent reading this year sucked.  I hated it."), but I think they were pleased to get a chance to vent their feelings about having to do something every day that they feel they're really bad at.

In the end, I think the independent reading was a good idea.  I have some ideas about how to change it in the future, but I still think this is a direction we should all be taking.

***********************************************************************************
Here are the responses, unedited except for redacting the name of one elementary school.

Weakly positive:

• It wasn't bad.  I liked it better than class work.  If the book was good, I liked it.  It got better over the year.  I'll probably read more.
• I think that the independent reading this year wasn't that bad.  It helped me read a lot, which increased my vocabulary.  I have read more this year than last year.

Strongly negative:

• My independent reading has greatly increased.  I still don't like reading, but if I have to then I will.  Reading didn't actually change my year in any way whatsoever.  I most likely will never read again unless I have to.
• I thought the independent reading this year sucked.  I hated it.  I never liked to read, and I never will.  the only time I would like to read is if I find a book that I actually like that doesn't happen often.  I Hate independent reading and I think you shouldn't do it next year.

Strongly positive:

• My independent reading got a lot better for me this year as far as how much reading i did.  Because of the amount of reading we did this year i will continue to read a lot and enjoy reading.
• I really started to like reading again.  This really going to help me in the future because I want to actually pick up a book and read compared to last year when I would spark note everything.
• By reading a lot this year, it made me read more books that I really liked.  I also read a lot at home.  I definatly became a better reader and really enjoyed the unit. I think that I will read a lot this summer and next year.  I haven't read more in my life than I did this year.
• Independent reading this year was at least for me an improvement over the past couple of years. At __________ our teachers never forced us to read that much because we would always be reading a book as a class.  The only problem was I didn't read that much compared to the others in our class.  I would like to keep improving on the amount that I read because my family do so much of it.  This was still a very good year for me even if it may not look like much it's probably the most that I've ever read in my entire life.
• I liked independent reading a lot more than assigned reading. It gave me an option to find a book I liked rather than a boring book. I didn't read many books over the course of the year, But I read more than I did last year. I would like to read more in the future.
• I thought that the independent reading this year was a great idea.  I hate reading as a class because I read slower so I have trouble staying up to date.  It has made me more enthusiastic about reading.  I think I will definately do more independent reading this summer.  At first I wasn't thrilled with the idea of reading on my own but as the year progressed I began to enjoy it.  Thank you for encouraging me to read more and thus making me enjoy it more. Definately do this next year.
• Independent reading this year has helped me advance to a faster reader.  I've read 3 books the whole way through this year, and I haven't done that before.  I've challenged myself with more challenging books this year and I've also figured out what genre I'm most interested in.
• Independent reading really opened my eyes to reading more.  Some books I really liked and some books I hated.  Independent reading in class really improved my reading skills.  I think you should continue to allow your students to do independent reading.
• I thought independent reading was great for me.  Whenever I have to read, I really feel like I am reading for myself.  Reading did change for me.  I have developed my interest and skills in reading. In the future, reading will be closer to my fashion.

The most exciting literacy scholarship being written today

For me, the most exciting literacy scholarship being written today is by a Rutgers professor named Chantal Francois.  Her work documents an amazing urban school that has devoted itself to creating a humane culture of reading, a culture in which reading is valued, in which books are everywhere, in which teachers know students' individual interests, in which the Principal leads by example, and in which students' reading skills increase dramatically.

Francois's most recent article, "Reading in the Crawl Space," has just come out in the Teachers College Record.  It is a vision of where we should be going, a vision of a school that offers everyone what Scout and Jem got at their reading father's knee, a vision of a school that would lead us all, not only to the Common Core's "college and career readiness," but to happier, healthier, more moral lives. Everyone who cares about education should read Francois's work.

Getting kids to read complex texts: challenge, not difficulty; engagement before challenge

I've been thinking about complex texts recently, not only because there's been a lot of talk about the Common Core's call for increasing text complexity, but also because my ninth grade classes are reading To Kill a Mockingbird and my Juniors are reading Song of Solomon. Both texts are pretty complex, and too difficult for some of my students (most, in the case of my ninth graders) to read comfortably.  I've been dealing with the problem by doing a lot of reading aloud--which has been great--but I've also been mulling over a kind of reverse Jane Fonda principle: Less pain, more gain.

Engagement, not difficulty
Learning should be challenging and interesting, and our students should be engaged, but we should not be giving them reading that is difficult for them.  Here's a rule of thumb: the more difficult the task, the more engagement is required.  The first thing we teachers should be thinking about, then, is engagement and interest--not difficulty.  The more students are engaged, the more they will be able to tackle difficult tasks.  This principle--of putting engagement before difficulty--is very important when you're thinking about reading.

The heart of the Common Core ELA standards is the requirement that students be able to read complex (i.e. difficult) texts independently.  This is a wonderful goal, but school tends to go about it in the wrong way. If we want kids to read texts of increasing complexity, it is important that they (1) be able to read them, and (2) be interested in what they are reading--and if a text is so difficult that the student finds it painful, it is very important that they not try to persevere with that text.  Too often, students get the worst of both worlds: they are not very interested in what they are told to read, and the reading is too hard.

The first thing we need to do is get kids reading a lot
Less skilled readers do not need "challenging" texts.  Less skilled readers do not need to be pushed, as so much discussion around the Common Core implies, to read more complex and difficult texts.  What they need is what all kids need: to read a lot of books they are interested in, books they can read, over many, many years.

The way readers become able to read complex text is by reading a lot of text that is not difficult for them.  My son is a very good reader, and he reads quite a lot, but he has never forced himself--or been forced by anyone else--to read books that were difficult for him.  He is lucky, but he is like most of our highly skilled readers.  Most highly skilled readers grew up hearing lots of adult talk, were provided with lots of high-interest books from an early age, and were not forced to read books that were too difficult for them.  In school, kids like my son never encounter text that is painfully difficult.  His Science textbook may be kind of boring to him, but for him, unlike many other students in his class, it is not too difficult.  When he gets to ninth grade, he may be somewhat bored when he is asked to reread books he's already read (To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, etc.), but those books will not be for him, as they are for so many others, too difficult for him to read comfortably.  Good readers get better not only because they choose to read more in their spare time, but because the assigned reading they receive is at their level.  Forcing kids to read difficult text will not work.

Books that are hard may be manageable if kids are really interested
Good readers often try books that are diificult for them.  If the books are too hard, they drop them.  That's what I do, that's what you do--and it's what my son does.  My son has, for a long time, been really interested in books about Black athletes; when he was nine or so he started reading the new biography of Willie Mays, a book written for adults.  It was tough, but he kept at it, off and on, for nearly a year, and finally he finished it.  No one forced him, but he did it.

In the same way, one of my ninth-grade students has spent the last month very slowly getting through the first two hundred pages of Wasted, by Marya Hornbacher, a painful memoir about anorexia and bulimia.  My student usually races through books she's interested in, but this one is moving very slowly.  That's okay; she's enjoying it, and she's very proud of being able to read it.

But if the kids want to drop them, or aren't reading them steadily, they should drop them
Again, isn't this what we all do?  Sure, sometimes it's good to push yourself, but you need to want to push yourself.  If you don't want to, you'll do what I did when I was assigned Proust in a college French literature class: you won't read it.  That' wasn't terrible (I read Remembrance of Things Past in English, and I loved it), but I certainly would have gotten better at reading French literature if instead of being assigned Proust, I had been allowed to read easier books.

Over the past several months, my son has tried lots of books that sounded really interesting to him but that ended up being too hard for him to read comfortably.  The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Guns Germs and Steel, and David Remnick's book about Muhammad Ali, King of the World, are a few examples. He loves history, and he's been very interested in the lives of Black athletes, but these books were just too hard.  He could read them, but only with difficulty, and he felt he wasn't getting enough out of them to continue, so he dropped them.  That's okay; he'll read them some other time, and, more importantly, dropping Jared Diamond allows him to read Walter Dean Myers.

Challenge, not difficulty
In a sense, difficulty is always bad.  We learn best when we are in the zone, in the flow, whatever you want to call it.  You can't experience flow when something is difficult. Challenging, yes, interesting, yes, complex, sure--but not difficult.

[In my next post I'm going to look at some of the curriculum that's being developed for the Common Core Standards, to see how that curriculum looks in terms of text complexity, likely student engagement, and reading volume.  Stay tuned.]