{"id":5264,"date":"2023-07-15T18:41:30","date_gmt":"2023-07-15T18:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/leadership\/if-kids-dont-read-for-fun-try-immersing-them-in-a-story\/"},"modified":"2023-07-15T18:41:31","modified_gmt":"2023-07-15T18:41:31","slug":"if-kids-dont-read-for-fun-try-immersing-them-in-a-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=5264","title":{"rendered":"If Kids Don’t Read for Fun, Try Immersing Them in a Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The percentage of students who read for pleasure has declined dramatically in recent years. While there are multiple causes, one likely reason is a well-intentioned but misguided approach to teaching literature.<\/p>\n

Recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is alarming\u2014and not just because of historic declines in reading and math scores. The thirteen-year-olds who took the test were also asked about their reading habits, including how often they read for pleasure.<\/p>\n

The percentage who said they read on their own \u201calmost every day\u201d was down to a new low of 14%, a figure that was almost half of what it was in 2012 (27%). And the percentage who reported they \u201cnever or hardly ever\u201d read for pleasure had increased to 31%, up from 22% in 2012.<\/p>\n

No doubt smartphones and other devices, and concomitant shrinking attention spans, have a lot to do with this trend. The pandemic may be a factor too. But as some commentators have argued, it\u2019s likely there\u2019s another cause\u2014one we have more control over: Schools have been giving students isolated bits of text rather than letting them sink their teeth into engaging novels, and they\u2019ve prioritized teaching analytical reading skills over allowing kids to immerse themselves in a good story.<\/p>\n

<\/fbs-ad><\/p>\n

The Role of the Common Core<\/h2>\n

Writing in the New York Times<\/em>, Pamela Paul identifies this as a problem in middle and high school, where, she says, English class is \u201coften a misery.\u201d She blames the situation largely on the Common Core State Standards, adopted by most states about ten years ago.<\/p>\n

The root of the problem, in Paul\u2019s view, is the CCSS\u2019s requirement that students read more nonfiction, with the proportion rising to 70% by high school. That, she says, has led English teachers to try to cover more literature by using excerpts and snippets. That may well be true, but both Paul and those English teachers have overlooked the fact that the 70% figure applies not just to English class but to the curriculum as a whole.<\/p>\n

Another aspect of the CCSS may be at least as important: its emphasis on \u201cclose reading.\u201d Although its authors didn\u2019t necessarily mean that literacy instruction should consist solely of painstakingly picking apart one or two paragraphs of text, that\u2019s often how it\u2019s been interpreted in practice.<\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t limited to middle and high school. Children\u2019s book author Katherine Marsh, writing in the Atlantic<\/em>, makes many of the same points Paul does, and one of her examples is a Common Core third-grade standard on distinguishing literal from non-literal language. Marsh observes that one way to help students understand the distinction would be to read them one of the humorous books about Amelia Bedelia, the famously literal-minded fictional maid.<\/p>\n

But Marsh cites a lesson designed to align with this standard that gives children just a one-paragraph excerpt, in which Amelia Bedelia gets the \u201cspots\u201d out of her employer\u2019s polka-dotted dress by excising them with a pair of scissors. The paragraph is followed by several dispiriting comprehension questions of the type used on standardized tests.<\/p>\n

As Marsh observes, this kind of lesson is supposed to teach close reading skills while also catering to kids\u2019 supposedly limited reading stamina. In addition to blaming CCSS, Marsh fingers another education-world acronym: NCLB, for No Child Left Behind. That federal legislation placed enormous emphasis on reading test scores and led to instruction that often mirrors the format of the tests.<\/p>\n

The Problem Goes Deeper<\/h2>\n

No doubt both NCLB and the CCSS have each helped to drain the joy from reading, albeit unintentionally. But they didn\u2019t create the problem, at least at the elementary level. Although read-alouds from chapter books and \u201cthematic\u201d teaching used to be more common than they are now, elementary schools have long tried to use brief snippets of simple text as vehicles for teaching reading comprehension skills.<\/p>\n

In an article published in American Educator <\/em>in 2003, only a year after NCLB went into effect, commentator Kate Walsh pointed out that widely used reading textbooks consisted largely of short passages with little actual content and put supposed skills like \u201csequencing\u201d in the foreground.<\/p>\n

And in 2008\u2014two years before the CCSS was promulgated\u2014an author of popular children\u2019s poetry books, Mary Ann Hoberman, complained that she didn\u2019t like it \u201cwhen a four-line poem of mine is in a teacher\u2019s manual, and there are three pages on how to use it across the curriculum, and it\u2019s analyzed to death. That\u2019s not what poetry is for. It\u2019s for joy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor is this a problem that\u2019s confined to the United States. A study done in England and published in 2018 observed that teachers there often give poorer adolescent readers \u201cshort, simplified texts\u201d and expect them to \u201canalyze every part in a slow laborious read-through.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main justification for that approach, at least in the U.S., is that it will boost comprehension as reflected in test scores. But, given that reading scores have been stagnant or declining for the past 25 years, there\u2019s little evidence to support that justification. And the study done in England suggests that simply enabling students to enjoy good novels can provide a more powerful boost to comprehension.<\/p>\n

Boosting Comprehension\u2014and Enjoyment<\/h2>\n

Working with a sample of about 350 12- and 13-year-olds who were average or poor readers, the researchers had teachers read aloud \u201ctwo whole challenging novels at a faster pace than usual.\u201d At the end of 12 weeks, students had made about eight months progress on average, as measured by standardized reading comprehension tests\u2014and the poor readers had made an astounding 16 months of progress.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, students clearly enjoyed the experience. When the allotted time for the daily read-aloud was over, they would clamor for more. Questions like \u201cCan we speed read so we can finish the book?\u201d were typical.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve argued elsewhere, it\u2019s possible that students\u2019 emotional engagement in the material helped them retain the vocabulary they needed to understand the passages on the reading test. And that vocabulary, along with the realization that reading can be fun, could well lead them to engage in more reading for pleasure.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve observed this phenomenon myself in other contexts, and I\u2019ve heard about it from educators. I\u2019ve seen teachers read aloud from engaging novels\u2014even, on one occasion, the rather challenging Jane Eyre<\/em>\u2014and watched students of various ages become mesmerized. Teachers have told me students often want to read more by the same author on their own. And it\u2019s not just novels. If a read-aloud gets kids interested in a topic like the American Revolution, they want to read more about that.<\/p>\n

But many teachers have been trained to believe that the only way kids will learn to read\u2014and to enjoy reading\u2014is for them to choose books that have been determined to be at their reading level and read them independently.<\/p>\n

One school district leader I recently interviewed for a podcast I\u2019m hosting told me how wedded teachers are to that belief\u2014and how mistaken it can be. Like an increasing number of districts across the country, Pentucket, Massachusetts, has adopted a different kind of literacy curriculum\u2014one that relies more on read-alouds and class discussion to build students\u2019 knowledge of the world and vocabulary.<\/p>\n

Brent Conway, the district\u2019s assistant superintendent, told me some teachers were horrified when they were told that the usual 20 minutes of independent reading time would no longer be in the schedule. That\u2019s how kids learn to love reading, they protested.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got news for you,\u201d Conway says he told them. \u201cHalf of your kids despise that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

As both Paul and Marsh observe, when students get immersed in a narrative, they not only enjoy it, they enter a different world\u2014one that expands their horizons and enables them to connect with characters whose lives may be very different from their own. Another educator I interviewed for the podcast, Kyair Butts, saw that for himself.<\/p>\n

Butts\u2019 district had recently adopted a knowledge-building curriculum that had his sixth-graders read the novel Out of the Dust<\/em>. Butts was dubious that his students\u2014Black kids in inner-city Baltimore\u2014would be interested in a story about \u201ca 13-year-old white girl from Depression-era Oklahoma.\u201d But, he says, \u201cwhen students care about a character, and when they realize that Billie Jo lost her mom and her baby brother, they are hooked. They want to keep reading.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m confident that all teachers want their students to feel that way. They\u2019ve just been misled about what it takes to create that feeling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The percentage of students who read for pleasure has declined dramatically in recent years. While there are multiple causes, one likely reason is a well-intentioned but misguided approach to teaching literature. Recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is alarming\u2014and not just because of historic declines in reading and math scores. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5264","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leadership"},"yoast_head":"\nIf Kids Don't Read for Fun, Try Immersing Them in a Story | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The percentage of students who read for pleasure has declined dramatically in recent years. 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