Themes

Reading the World

Reading well encourages critical thinking, a skill necessary for every day life. Students should be introduced to myriad types and styles of writing in order to deepen their reading comprehension skills. Young people need to be taught to be more critical consumers of information. Thus, reading for class should not just be limited to texts from the literary canon; rather, it should include advertisements, technical writings, news articles, images, and other such alternative sources of information. When students are reading literature rather than informational texts, educators need to assist students in seeing how these texts will help them as well. Educators often justify their book selections for class by qualifying them as “great stories” that help us to “appreciate the writer’s craft.” While these are noble and worthwhile reasons for reading a book, they fail to capture a primary function of literature, namely that it encourages us to consider universal themes and larger social issues. ”Literature enables students to experience a safe ‘practice run’ through the great issues confronting us...” (Gallagher 20). Teaching deeper reading will create more intelligent and able adults once those readers reach the “real world.”

Consider these Key Questions

Apply using: Strategies: Reading the World

Focusing the Reader

Building students’ interest in the text to be read is a major challenge of teaching deep reading. The teacher serves as the guide to the text, leading students to meaningful reflection by being there through every step of the reading, before, during, and after, with before perhaps being the most important. Students need meaningful prior knowledge to build a connection to the text, a reason to read the text, because “how a person feels about a learning situation determines the amount of attention devoted to it”(Gallagher 29). In order to facilitate in depth reading, students need to understand why what they are reading is personally relevant to them. Students’ prior experiences will impact their degree of comprehension. As a result, students who come to a new text with no background knowledge may have trouble understanding and remembering what they have read. We must build a frame for a text in order to ensure that students find it personally relevant. This task enables students to better comprehend a work.

Consider these Key Questions

Apply using: Strategies: Focusing the Reader

Consider these Key Questions

Apply using: Strategies: First-Draft Reading and Strategies: Second-Draft Reading

The Importance of Collaboration

Working in groups with other students is important to the understanding students will take away after working with a text. No single student is going to get everything possible out of the text because “every one of us comes to the printed page with different prior knowledge and experiences, with different viewpoints and biases, with different insights and blind spots” (Gallagher 104). Through the time given to group discussion, students’ eyes will be opened to different viewpoints, understandings, misunderstandings, thoughts, and conclusions. They also learn to speak and discuss appropriately, respectfully, and collaboratively about their own opinions. It can be difficult for a young reader to truly see the universal themes and larger social issues in a text, as discussed in the “Reading the World” theme, on their own. “Having students reflect on their reading by connecting it to a contemporary point of view is essential,” and having them do so as a group, as well as individually, can widen the range of their reflection (Gallagher 20).

Consider these Key Questions

Apply using: Strategies: Collaboration