When Every Word Counts
In our everyday lives, we don’t pay close attention to every word we read. We read for the gist of things, concentrating more on big ideas than on subtle shades of meaning, new vocabulary, and unusual turns of phrase. This is just as it should be. There’s too much information in the world for us to ponder every bit of it every time we skim the newspaper or scan a web page.
Key Ideas That Ground Me in My Teaching
Teachers are under great pressure to change their teaching these days. Hardly a year goes by that isn’t filled with new curriculum, new methods, and new requirements delivered as new mandates to which teachers must conform. Because reading is the first “r”, the change here has been particularly sweeping, so much so that it’s easy for some of us to feel swept off our feet into styles of teaching we’re not comfortable with.
Helping Kids Connect Real-Life Reading with Real-Life Learning
As part of our non-fiction stuff this semester I brought in six NCAA football coaches' contracts. All the boys thought that was the coolest thing; everyone seemed to enjoy actually reading something "real". That's what they said: the contract was real, not like reading articles or biographies or editorials. When I asked them what those things were, they said "fluffy". It was a very interesting conversation.
Continue reading "Non-Fiction Reading with Suzanne Forman" »
Seven Simple Practices That Accelerate Student Progress
I was listening to a news story on the radio about how schools are helping struggling readers. One school had taken a group of low-reading 9th graders and put them into a special class. Reading levels in the group ranged from 3rd to 5th grade and, predictably, many kids admitted they really didn’t like to read. As the teacher called the class together to begin the lesson, something caught my attention. Everyone in the class was reading To Kill a Mockingbird.
An Organized Approach to Strategic Reading
Like many educators, I was attracted to the idea of strategic reading. Prior to learning about the strategic reading movement, I often felt that what I taught kids about reading never addressed the task of reading itself. I realize now that what I had in my teaching repertoire was a set of reading activities, things kids could do after they read something. By contrast, strategic reading gave me things I could teach kids to do while they read, things that would actually help them read better.
Helping Kids Decode Unfamiliar Words
When readers are just starting out, they spend a lot of time and effort trying to decode words. This is not an easy task. Turning symbols into sounds and sounds into words involves a lot of guess work. Sometimes, after all that trial and error, readers are left only with errors that try their patience.
Being Explicit About My Values for Student Success
When I first stared working with kids, I made the mistake of mentally separating them into two groups: the kids I enjoyed teaching and the kids I didn’t. Not surprisingly, my behaviors toward each group only reinforced the stereotype I had created and made it harder for me to be effective with kids in either group. In general, I was too punitive toward the kids I didn’t want to teach and too permissive toward the kids I did.
Teaching Kids to Read is Easier If They’re Already Readers
In an era of testing and standards, it’s easy to develop the mindset that kids aren’t readers until they’ve passed a test that says they are. But I’ve found that kids do better when I can convince them that their readers the minute they step into the classroom—even during their very first days of school.
Tackling a Classic of the Curriculum
When it comes to critical reading of great literature, the concept of “theme” is one of the most important things readers need to understand. And yet it can be hard to teach, especially if our students don’t seem to have an inherent grasp of the idea. For starters, theme isn’t typically defined in ways young readers can easily understand. If you look in the dictionary, you’ll find definitions like: “A topic of discourse; A subject of artistic representation; A unifying idea that is a recurrent element in a literary work; etc.” All correct definitions, but try using that language to explain theme to a 9th grader.
The Best Reading Strategy to Start With
The first thing I do with a group of readers is get them picking good books. It’s a bit chaotic at first, but after a few days, everyone settles down to some serious reading. Then I start to get nervous. It’s hard enough helping kids figure out what to read, now I have to show them how.
Is There Logic Behind These Numbers?
by Meryem Kennedy
If you are familiar with Readers and Writers Workshop, you probably already know what the 20/20 Vision is: Publish 20 pieces of writing and read 20 books a year. This is a goal for students to push for.
The first year I started implementing this in my ESL classes, I had some problems with student reaction to the enormous amount of books they were expected to read. To decrease their anxiety level, I told my panic-stricken ones, "This only translates into 5 books a quarter (9 weeks)." Needless to say this helped.
However, when the panic died down, I had to deal with kids would choose the skinniest books and be done with reading in 3 weeks instead of reading for the whole 9 weeks. I also had the sincerely interested kids who wanted to read books like Harry Potter of 400+ pages but were scared that it would be the only book they would read. Then of course there has been the problem of how many words a book has on a page and how many pages are filled with illustrations instead of print.
Suzanne Forman sez...
What an incredibly tough question. I was told my expectations were too high to ask kids to read at least 6 books this semester, unless they could all of them "in class" given class time to read each and everyone of them. The fact that I lowered my expectations from previous years was sickening enough for me, but to then be told my expectations brought bile to the top of my throat!
Motivation, Reading Levels, and Book Selection
In general, I’m not a fan of letting kids pick books they can’t read. Letting kids struggle day after day with books two or three years above their reading level is a recipe for fatigue, frustration, and the reinforcement of bad habits. But kids often want to read books they can’t read precisely because they can’t read them. Hard books are cool books, and many kids would rather be cool than literate. So over the years, I’ve developed an approach to dealing with this situation that tries to square kids’ motivations with my instructional goals.
Using The Pledge of Allegiance to Improve Reading Fluency
Every few years, it seems we experience a minor controversy in education around The Pledge of Allegiance. Should kids have to say it? Should it include the words “under God”? And so on. What do I think about this? I think The Pledge of Allegiance is one of the best tools we have in America for teaching kids how to read.
Keeping Summaries Under Control
I want kids to talk and write about what they read. But sometimes, when they give book talks or write book reviews, I feel like it’s déjà vu all over again. Instead of talking about their books, kids regurgitate them in episodes of endless summary. Even when I ask them to stop, they keep piling up details until their summaries are so thick it’s as though they’ve rewritten an entire novel.
Meryem Kennedy sez...
One strategy I use in my class in reading is finding a golden line in a book. I give students about 10 minutes to read in class and ask them to pick a sentence that inspires them or speaks to them for whatever reason.
Meryem Kennedy sez...
Just like we would expect students to be working on math problems in a math class, we naturally expect students to read in any Language Arts and Reading class. And in a math class we would expect the students "understand" the problem and the solution they are working on. If the student gets the logic behind how a problem is solved, answering any problems anywhere won't be a problem for him.
High Expectations That Turn Kids into Readers
When people ask me, “How much should kids read?”, I’m tempted to say things like “a lot”, “as much as they can”, “until their eyeballs fall out!” I don’t say these things, but I’m tempted. It’s not that I want to be flip, it’s just that I think we’re all dancing around the wrong question. Instead of asking “How much should kids read?”, I think we should be asking, “What kind of readers do we want kids to be?”
Making Sure the First “R” Comes First
What gets tested, gets taught. That’s one of the guiding principles of education reform. And it certainly appears to be working. But is it working the way we want it to with regard to reading?
Using the Six Qualities to Help Kids Pick Books, Assess Their Reading Ability, and Set Goals for Improvement
Recently, I spent a week working with several classes of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. Most of these kids were two or more years below grade level in reading and had been trying to read books that were way too hard for them. As a result, they weren’t enjoying reading, they weren’t able to read quietly for long periods of time, and they weren’t finishing books. They were also developing bad habits like ignoring any word they didn’t know or just turning pages without reading to make it look like they were making progress. Many kids still read word-by-word tracking with their fingers and a few had to read out loud because they’d never learned to read silently.
Continue reading "Success Story: Teaching the Six Qualities of Good Reading" »
Meaningful After-Reading Activities That Help Kids Showcase Real Reading Skills
“It’s great that kids do all this reading and that teachers do all this conferencing, but when do I get something to grade?”
I get this question, or a variation of it, all the time. It probably comes from that part of us that says kids aren’t really working unless they have work to turn in. Another part simply reflects the reality that standards-based teaching is driven by the need for assessable products.
Meryem Kennedy sez...
Sharing is US! We human beings are made to share. I never thought of this before: Sharing in reading comes naturally to me. Since I started school when I was five, I have always had an audience (poor mom, sisters, pets) to share what I read in books.
Meryem Kennedy sez...
Some people are born to party, like some of my students, but I was born to read. I read e-ve-ry-thing. I can't help it. If there is a print somewhere, I have to know what it says.
Encouraging Student-Generated Discussion When Nobody Wants to Talk
On evenings when we’re not mesmerized by bad television, my wife and I have family reading night. She has a stack on her side of the bed. I have a stack on mine. Our dog sleeps at the foot, mildly disappointed that we won’t be having treats with TV. Not much happens, but occasionally one of us will turn to the other and say, “Listen to this.” And that’s how sharing in reading begins.
Knowing What We Read, and Knowing What to Do When We Don’t
As literate adults who’ve been reading for decades, most of us have a well-tuned sense of what we understand and what we don’t. As we glide along line after line, we know intuitively if what we read makes sense to us, or if certain words or ideas are confusing. And we usually know what to do when we’re confused.
But many kids don’t.
I'm the President of Teaching That Makes Sense, Inc., a North Carolina-based educational consulting company that provides a variety of services to K-12 school in the United States and Canada.
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