Essential Question: How can reading not suck in high school?

Introduction:

Reading is important. School is important. Reading in school is important. But reading in school is also problematic. 

School is where we read things we've never read before and it exposes us to ideas and experiences we might have never understood otherwise. School is where we learn to read deeply - noticing choices authors make about words, sentences, and organization - so that we can understand how written things shape our minds. BUT, this is also the very stuff that makes the reading experience suck for kids. By the time most students get to grade 11, most hate reading and only do it when they have to.

Consider the article below:

So Why Does Reading Even Matter? 

Here's why:

The act of daily reading can have a significant impact. Consider this chart:

So, we are going to read daily for a minimum of 10 to 15 minutes. If you enjoy reading, it may seem like this amount of time isn’t enough. If you hate reading, this time may feel like slow torture (I hope this changes for you, but it is okay if it doesn’t).  Need more reasons why reading matters? Here you go:

• Helps reduce stress by 68% according to a 2009 study at the University of Sussex.

• Helps build a daily reading habit - according to research that shows that around half of our daily actions are driven by repetition.

• Children who read for pleasure are likely to do significantly better in school than their peers who rarely read. Sullivan and Brown (2013) demonstrate that pleasure reading is linked to increased cognitive progress over time. They recommend that educators and policy makers “support and encourage children’s reading in their leisure time.” 

•  Sullivan and Brown (2013) found that children between the ages of 10 and 16 who read for pleasure made more progress in vocabulary and spelling as well as math than those who rarely read. 

• “The research base on student-selected reading is robust and conclusive. Students read more, understand more, and are more likely to continue reading when they have the opportunity to choose what they read” (Allington and Gabriel, 2012). 

• Self-selected reading is twice as powerful as teacher-selected reading in developing motivation and comprehension (Guthrie and Humenick, 2004). 

• Wilhelm and Smith (2013, 2016) demonstrate that pleasure is always at the heart of engaged reading and that pleasure is multifaceted. Their interviews with avid teen readers revealed that teens read deeply for a wide range of reasons: play, intellectual, social, and “inner work” (psychological and spiritual exploration). 

• As essential aspect of becoming a real reader is knowing yourself as a reader— made possible through wide reading driven by access to abundant books and personal choice (Wilhelm and Smith, 2014; Miller, 2013; Tatum, 2009, 2013; Allington and Gabriel, 2012)

Independent, Free-choice, Low-stakes Reading

For a significant portion of this year, the reading you will do will be stuff that you choose to read. All I am going to ask you to do is keep track of what you are reading and how many pages you are reading in a day (whether it is 2 or 22). I am going to ask you to look for words that you are interested in (either because you don't know what they are or just because you think they are cool). And occasionally, I may ask you to answer a question about your thoughts on what you are reading. That's pretty much it. 

Interactive Reading Notebook

I am going to ask you to do this work, and occasionally other stuff related to reading, in this reader notebook. That way I can check in with you and see how you are liking books you're reading, etc. So, click on this link to open your own copy of the notebook below.

STUDENT COPY OF NOTEBOOK