In the Classroom: Bit o’ Book

Sigh. From Bookwitch I learned about a new UK study looking at the practice of reading aloud parts rather than the whole book in schools.   From the press release:

The first wide-scale research into the use of whole books in literacy teaching in the UK has revealed that a quarter of primary school children are reading just one whole book a year in class. Incredibly, 12 per cent of primary school teachers said they have never read a complete book with their class. If the findings were extrapolated to all primaries across the country it would mean nearly 600,000 children never read a book in class with their teacher, while over 1.1 million would only study one whole book a year in class.

The research, commissioned by educational publisher Heinemann, part of Pearson Education, involved over 500 primary teaching staff working in 500 schools in the UK along with 1,000 parents of school age children. It exposes a worrying picture of dependence on bite-size text extracts, rather than whole books, for teaching literacy. It also found:

• Pupils are missing out on some of the best-loved stories in children’s literature, according to the research. Half of teachers could think of at least one occasion where pupils were left ignorant of the narrative of a novel because whole book teaching was not a priority in class. Examples of books not finished in class, cited by teachers, included The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Treasure Island; The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark; Goodnight Mr Tom and Roald Dahl classics.

• Some 85 per cent of teachers said children miss out on finding “what happens next” by not reading a whole book.

• Nearly two-thirds of teachers feared the absence of teaching literacy using whole books in class could turn children off reading, while a further one in five say they have seen evidence of this happening already.

• Six in ten primary school teachers believe a return to whole book reading in their classrooms would have real academic benefits (on exam performance and academic success).

Michael Rosen, the former Children’s Laureate and a campaigner for a return to real, whole book reading in British schools, said: “This research shows that in thousands of classrooms children are not reading books or talking about books, I think it will shock the public that so few whole books are being taught in class.

“There are going to be children who will only be taught about three or four books as part of their literacy education in the whole of their primary careers. For the thousands of children who don’t read books at home, it is a travesty. That’s three books they might have come across in the whole of their infant lives.”

• The research also revealed a gulf between literacy teaching in state and private schools. State primary classes were almost twice as likely to not finish a whole book as their independent school counterparts (13 per cent compared to just eight per cent in private schools).

• According to the research, three-quarters of teachers said children’s ‘reading stamina’ and concentration levels were being damaged by the lack of whole book reading.

• When asked about the impact of extract teaching on the different genders, teachers were twice as likely to say they had a greater negative impact on boys vs girls (21% vs 11%)

“The idea that children can’t manage whole stories or whole books is a nonsense,” added Michael Rosen. “No extract in the world has the power of books. Extracts deny children the meat of the story. Take Roald Dahl’s Matilda. It is full of powerful emotions – such as fear, love and sympathy. These are vital ideas that children need to get hold of. But if children do not read the whole book, they will never get to the heart of the book – how evil can be overcome with a mixture of courage, compassion and solidarity. All they will discover is that there is a horrible woman called Miss Trunchbull.”

Teachers questioned in the research overwhelmingly backed a return to schools using whole books to teach literacy. Three-quarters of teachers say they want to teach literacy using either whole books or whole books, backed by extracts. 72 per cent of head teachers also believe that such an approach would have real academic benefits and improve results while helping to develop a child’s love of reading.

In The Classroom: Reading Aloud Redux

In the latest Notes from the Horn Book, Richard Peck is very opinionated about teachers reading aloud his books:

4. You talk a lot with young readers. What are they telling you?

Things they didn’t mean to. Over and over they’re telling me that the books I wrote for them to read are being read to them by their teachers. And hearing a story read doesn’t seem to expand their vocabularies. If a teacher is going to take limited classroom time in reading aloud (and even giving away the ending), the least she could do is hand out a list of vocabulary from the reading to be looked up and learned.

Years ago I heard Peck come down very hard on teachers and, ever since, I’ve had to separate that memory when reading his books. This year I feel A Season of Gifts is one of the strongest books of the year — the character development excellent, the various threads of story beautifully developed, and the language and setting is sublime.  A really lovely work.   And so I will again set aside this quote from the author and continue to appreciate his work.  Maybe one day he will appreciate what I do too.

There are so many ways I read aloud to my students.  Recently I wrote about my general reading program and reading aloud is an important part of it.  My first day of school with students is this coming Monday and I’ve got a pile of books on my desk as I mull over which one I will begin with.  There will be no vocabulary lessons or sheets with it.  If the first book is Boyce’s Cosmic I may have to slip in a few bits of information, but only what is needed to enjoy the story.  If I read aloud  (but probably won’t because I think it is for older kids than those I teach) A Season of Gifts I would do the same thing — slip in explanations if necessary.  However, kids can also use their own developing skills to figure out what words mean themselves using context.  Turning a read aloud into a deadly vocabulary lesson happens, far too often, I fear.  And such a lesson is unlike to endear many of those child readers to Peck’s books, I’m afraid.

For more on what I read aloud in my classroom and how, here are a bunch of those posts.  Even better, go read this talented 6th grade teacher’s response to Peck.

In the Classroom: Teaching Reading

In the past week I’ve read two completely oppositional articles on teaching.  The first was “Tyranny of the Test: One Year as a Kaplan Coach in the Public Schools” by Jeremy Miller.  It is a superb piece providing a disturbing, real, and moving view of the specifics of legislation that has made Kaplan such a player in the schools, the sad realities of testing, teaching, and more.  The second was “Students Get New Assignment: Pick Books You Like.”  This is a very different sort of article, Mokoto Rich is a reporter for the New York Times, not a teacher, and so she comes to this topic quite differently — following a teacher as she begins this “new” method in her classroom — children choosing their own reading material.

The method is one of choice — individual reading rather than the whole-class-reads-one book method.  It isn’t, for all Rich suggests it is, new.  It was around when I started teaching in the early 70s and was around even earlier among those with a progressive mindset.  Choice is at the heart of Montessori, open classroom, whole language, constructivism, and many other pedagogies that have waxed and waned in popularity over the years.  I’m glad Rich featured Nancie Atwell, someone who inspired me twenty years ago with her seminal book, In the Middle.  She, along with others, gave me some  excellent tools that helped me to fine-tune a method I already had been using — now known as readers’ workshop.

A few years after that I spent a summer at Princeton studying classical children’s literature. I came back to my classroom determined to bring some of that magic into my teaching.  Since then other experiences have helped me to continually refine how I teach reading.  At the moment, in broad sweeps (leaving out the specific lessons that I do), here’s an overview:

• Independent Reading.  My students are all expected to always have a book they’ve chosen to read.  The only homework I assign is to read for at least 30 minutes a night. I monitor the reading by having the children write the book title and the pages read.  I can easily determine how their reading is going by those pages.  If a child is only reading ten pages in 30 minutes night after night, for example, something is wrong and I will investigate.  I encourage them to drop books they don’t like and work hard to help them find ones they do.  Periodically I invite them to prepare readings from these books for the class for our weekly Literary Salons.   I have private conversations with them about their readings. They write about the books in response journals (and on blogs).  All the stuff mentioned in Rich’s article and many other places.
• Reading Aloud. I always am reading aloud a book, ideally one the kids can’t get themselves yet. Last year I read The Graveyard Book and When You Reach Me before they were published, for example.  I’m still mulling over the first book for this year.
• One Book for the Whole Class.  I do believe in occasionally reading a book together. I think that there can be a very special experience when a group comes together over a book.  And I have to say, I don’t get the vehemence some have against doing this. While I understand how it has been done badly, it can also be wonderful.  I mean, what about those communities that read books together?  Book groups?  Book clubs? Why can’t teachers orchestrate something similar in their classrooms?  Certainly, I hope I do.  We begin the year with Charlotte’s Web and end it with The Wizard of Oz. Both are wonderful experiences.
• Group Books.  We do a study of historical fiction prior to the kids writing their own.  As part of the preparations I have the kids read books in small groups.
• Research. Sometimes I think people are so invested in getting kids to love reading that they forget that there is all kinds of reading.  Sometimes it is to get information.  My students read widely when working on their historical fiction stories about Mayflower passengers. They read primary sources, secondary sources, all sorts of stuff.

Okay. I could go on, but I won’t.  Reading is so many different things to so many different people so it stands to reason there would be many different ways to teach it and many different ways to learn it.

Revisiting: The Secret Knowledge of Grown-Ups

The other day, looking for a relatively short read for my fourth graders, I went to my secret read-aloud stash and rediscovered David Wisniewski’s The Secret Knowledge of Grown-Ups.  Clutching it to my chest to keep the cover hidden, I sat down in my reading chair and asked the children to draw near.  I was, I informed them, being a traitor to my species — that of grown-ups.  I was going to do something that I might later rue, I told them.  And once I had their attention I carefully showed them the book cover and read it to them. Then, with great caution, I read the introduction in which Wisniewski describes how he became a secret agent (double agent, really, as he was doing something against our grown-up species after all!), scouting out these rules, usually in difficult disguises and with many a near escape.

Do I need to tell you I had every child in the palm of my hand by then?

Looking about shiftly, I then quietly read the first few pages — the truth about Grown-Up Rule #31: “Eat your vegetables.”  My students today (meat-eaters or not) adored the truth behind this rule (which you can sample yourself here). David Wisniewski, (who sadly died a few years ago) was the Caldecott winner for Golem and had a unique and witty style that never gets old.  There are two more books of Grown-Up Rules, but it is this first one that is the most successful in my opinion.

Years ago, when I first read this book aloud I would make a big deal of locking it up when done. The kids loved the game, begged me for it, sometimes rattled the locked closet door in a vain attempt to get the book; they loved everything about it. This year’s kids do too.  So here’s another that deserves to be revisited (or visited for the first time) by snarky adults and inquisitive kids.

In the Classroom: Great Read Alouds

I was delighted to see the short list for this year’s E. B. White Read Aloud Awards. I was particularly tickled to see Zorgamazoo recognized as it is so unique that I feared it would slip under the radar.  (You can go here to read more about what I thought about this clever novel in light verse.)

Here is the complete short list:

Picture Books

A Visitor for Bear by Bonny Becker, illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton (Candlewick)

Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Harry Bliss (HarperCollins)

One by Kathryn Otoshi (KO Kids Books)

Too Many Toys by David Shannon (Scholastic)

Books for Older Readers

The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas (HarperCollins)

Masterpiece by Elise Broach, illustrated by Kelly Murphy (Henry Holt)

The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Zorgamazoo by Robert Paul Weston, illustrated by Victor Rivas (Penguin)

In the Classroom: Reading Aloud

I do all sorts of read alouds, but the most important are the ones where I do an ongoing novel with the kids just listening and enjoying themselves. That is, they don’t have to talk (in fact often I won’t let them), answer my questions (or, worse, someone else’s say in a worksheet),  or feel an sort of obligation to do anything other than listen.  That is what I did with The Graveyard Book, The Underneath (still have to do a post about that), and now the forthcoming middle grade book by Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me.  A sixth grade teacher after my own heart about this is Sarah at the Reading Zone who has a terrific post up today about her reading aloud beliefs and practices.

In the Classroom: The Graveyard Book

It is raining outside, the shades are down, and the classroom is dark. The only light is a small dog-shaped lamp behind me illuminating the final pages of The Graveyard Book.  A couple of my fourth graders are sitting next to me reading along as I read aloud.  Several more are sitting directly in front of me, faces up, engrossed in the story.  Still others are lying flat out on the rug or scrunched up on pillows.  I’ve been reading for over thirty minutes now and there has not been a sound, not a rustle.  I can almost feel the children’s anticipation as I get to the last page of the book and read the final three words.

A few weeks back as the children avidly speculated about what would happen to Bod, wondered whether he would see Scarlett again, questioned why Jack was after him, and worried if he would survive I asked if they’d like to hear the last three words of the book. Words, I assured them, that wouldn’t spoil anything.  Yes, they said, please!  Please! And so I read those last three words to them. They were just right. Enough to know whatever happened, the ending would be good. And it was.  I choked up reading those words, reading those last sentences, just as I always do when reading the ending of Charlotte’s Web. There is something transcendent about the endings of both books. Both are sad and happy.  They are good.  And, above all, they are satisfying.  For my students, Bod’s story ended as it should.

***

After falling in love with book last summer I was delighted to see the enthusiastic reception it received in the children’s literature world. The reviews have been glowing and it is being justifiably touted for the Newbery.  But some wondered, what will children make of it?  So I decided to read it to my nine and ten year-olds and was gratified to see that they loved the book as much as any of us grown-ups did. So much so that we’ve created a mural of the book.  We may still scatter a few of the characters (say the living, the dead, and cats) around the border, but I’m so thrilled with it and eager to show it off that I’ve gone ahead and photographed it for you to see. The top part is the graveyard, the middle section is the town, and the bottom contains the kids’ favorite creepy places — the otherworldly Ghulheim and the tomb of the Sleer (and you will have to imagine getting to this by going down, down, down below the hill of the graveyard and the town).  We purposely used different materials and styles for each section  (Tissue paper, pipe cleaners, glitter, mod podge, various patterned papers were some of the materials. My favorite material has to be the cardboard from a Kleenex tissue box used for the gravestones and book title.)

Reading Aloud Howie

Dear Howie,

Even though you do tend to overuse a certain simile (finely tuned concert piano, anyone?) and overdo the adjectives about one character (that clever dachsund puppy) my class and I love you anyway. You write and worry about your writing, after all, just as they do in your clever series, Tales from the House of Bunnicula of which my personal favorite for reading aloud is It Came from Beneath the Bed. Your creator, James Howe, captures the trials and tribulations of young writers perfectly. Moving back and forth between Howie’s story and his writing journal is brilliant.

I read this story to my class every year as they grapple themselves with the complex issues of writing a good story. Cliff hangers, overusing certain words (…concert piano…), getting bored, and so forth, just what my students are dealing with too. One year we even created a list of “Howie’s Rules for Writing.”

Thanks for being a realistic, charming, and entertaining role model for my young writers.

All the best,

Monica Edinger

Reading Aloud Sir Gawain to a Four-Year-Old

Thanks to bookslut I came across a blogger who is indeed reading the new translation of Sir Gawain aloud to his four-year-old.

At chez Salt-Box, I am the one who reads “chapter books” to the Little Man, as opposed to books he can read by himself, or longer picture books or comic books, which anyone is allowed to read to him. As a result, A Santa thoughtfully made to the Little Man and me a joint present: Simon Armitage’s new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which we’re now about 40% through after polishing off the Iliad* Monday morning.

Read the whole post at The Salt-Box.

Reading Aloud The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming

Dear Latke,

I just read you aloud to my fourth grade class and it was great fun. While a religiously diverse group of children, a number are Jewish and very excited as it is the first night of Hanukah. They did want to correct the teller of your story, Mr Snicket, now and then (and me as I had a hard time pronouncing “Antiochus”correctly) until they saw what was what. Given the significance of the ax in another familiar story, that picture packed a wallop. I think most of all they enjoyed playing your part and screaming as loud as they could every time you did!

AAAHHHHHHH!!!

Sincerely,

Monica Edinger