The Book Whisperer (18 page)

Sadly, requiring parents to sign reading logs has failure written all over it. What I was really doing was assigning family homework, which is a hit-or-miss effort at best. As a new teacher, I assigned reading logs because it was what every other teacher did. How else would I monitor how much reading my students were doing?

The log is a reward for students who have strong home support for reading, but a punishment for those who don't. Thus, it never serves the students it's supposed to. Furthermore, in the case of my students who read at home each night but thought the log was a pain to maintain, it was a sign that I did not trust that they were reading when they said they were. No one wins in this battle.

So why assign logs in the first place? How did the reading log become such a ubiquitous practice? I see two reasons. Teachers require their students to keep reading logs because they think that parents will respond to the home reading requirement and monitor their children's reading more closely. Other teachers believe that mandating that students maintain and submit a reading log will motivate them to read.

Think long and hard about your students. I bet that the ones who are not keeping the log are those who you believe are not motivated readers, so this carrot-and-stick approach—require the accountability of the log, and they will read because of it—doesn't work. As long as the motivation to read sits outside the child, it will never be internalized. Don't be surprised if children who you know are capable, even avid readers, struggle with the log, too. These students prefer to spend their time reading, not accounting for their time. After a student spends an hour engrossed in a book, the log is a reminder that reading is a school job.

Why, then, are reading logs so popular among teachers? Because in theory, they provide us with tangible evidence that our students are engaged in independent reading. Yet they don't produce the outcome we are hoping for. The reality is that you can never mandate or monitor how much reading your students are doing at home. Yes, there will always be students and their parents who maintain the log because you require it, but there will also always be those for whom the log will serve only to discourage reading. Because it is an external motivation, the log never motivates students to read after the requirement is lifted. The bottom line: this log is about you, not your students. Logs don't give an accurate accounting of how much students are reading, and maintaining them does not motivate them to read more, either.

I expect my students to read at home for at least twenty minutes per night, but I never check on this or quiz them on whether they are doing it. I cannot effectively monitor this in any reasonable way. If a student is not making progress on his or her reading requirements or seems to spend an inordinate amount of time reading one book, I hold a conference with that student and ask about how much time he or she spends reading at home, but that is all.

As I discussed in Chapter Three, the only way to make sure that your students are reading every day is to set aside time for it in class. The only way you will know that your students read every day is to watch them read right in front of you. Daily reading is what transforms reading into a lifelong habit and builds reading ability—far preferable to bursts of reading as the sun sets on the night before a reading log is due. My students are more likely to continue reading a book at home when they have been reading it in school, too. I know this because they come to school excited about what they read the night before or groan that they stayed up too late reading again. Enthusiastic readers who eagerly tell me about what they read the night before are the only evidence I need that students are reading at home. The end-of-year evaluations I solicited from my students this year revealed that most of them were reading at home, even when I did not hold them accountable for it. Kenan declared, “I've read more books because of the time I get in class to read. I even read more at home because of it. I get to a really suspenseful part or toward the end [of the book] then I have to read it at home.” They read because they want to, not because I make them.

Setting some sort of goal for students' independent reading is a valid practice if the goal requires them to finish reading books. I have had students who would read and write every day in my class or record nightly reading in a log forever, and never actually complete a book or a piece of writing. Students are accomplished readers when they are able to express their feelings about the books they have read, not point to the number of hours they have spent doing time with a book. How does this work with a student who is struggling to meet his reading requirements? The following conversation with Jon illustrates how to encourage a student who is still not on board.

“I have only read six books this year,” Jon complains, so that everyone in the room hears. “We are halfway through the year. I am never going to read forty books.”

I could walk over to Jon and give him the reading pep talk, but I know there are others in class who could benefit from what I have to say, so I call back, “Jon, how many books did you read last year?”

“Hmm, two or three?”

Knowing that Jon is a sports fanatic, I ask, “Jon, if an athlete improved his performance 200 percent over one season, what would his coach say?”

“I guess he would think that was pretty good.”

“Jon, have you read some books that you liked this year?”

“Yeah, a few.”

I know that Jon has recommended
Soldier's Heart
and
Love That Dog
to some of his friends in class, so I can tell that he values at least some of what he is reading.

“Remember when I told the class that the average adult American read only four books last year? You are reading more than most adults do. Celebrate that, and don't worry so much about requirements. Just keep reading!”

Jon is reading, although not as much as either one of us thinks he should. His participation in our reading community, by recommending the books that he is reading to other readers, reflects growing engagement. The fact that Jon was previously able to get through an entire school year and read only two or three books and that this was acceptable is not a fact I dwell on. What I do honor, however, is his increase in reading. By the end of the year, Jon had, in fact, read twenty-five books and, at least some of the time, had found reading worthwhile.

Round-robin reading is the entrenched practice of calling on students randomly to read aloud. Some teachers use a modern variation of round-robin reading—popcorn reading—in an attempt to add a level of fun to the drudgery of reading aloud. During popcorn reading, the teacher calls on a student, who reads for a determined period of time or text length, and then the first reader calls on another student to pick up where they left off, jumping readers around the room like popcorn in a popper. Read-aloud activities like round-robin and popcorn reading are popular among teachers when the entire class reads the same book, short story, or textbook passage.

By randomly calling on students to read, these methods are meant to ensure that all students are following along, that they are paying attention to what is being read, and that everyone reads aloud occasionally, but I don't think these purposes serve the needs of students. The added factor that students hate round-robin reading makes it an act I question. Ask your adult friends what they remember about reading aloud in this manner, and I'll bet that many recall round-robin reading with the same level of anxiety as that associated with going to the board to solve math problems in front of the class. Under the guise of a fun activity for students, reading aloud on demand is just torture—not only for those who are reading but also for those who are listening.

Let's take a look at what is really going on during round-robin reading: Billy is called on to read a section from the social studies textbook. Billy, who is not a strong reader, labors to get through the passage, halting when he comes to words he does not know until he gets prompting from the teacher and, most likely, other students. He is embarrassed by his poor reading ability, and the frustration he senses from the other students. Everyone, including Billy, is relieved when he is done. Billy does not remember much of what he read because he did not understand it, but it doesn't matter. He does not continue to follow along with the class. He has already been called on to read once, and is safe for another day.

I suppose that we could avoid humiliating developing readers by not asking them to read aloud, but the picture is not any better for the capable readers.

Susie, who is a wonderful reader, whips through her section with few problems. The developing readers, who cannot keep up with the pace of Susie's reading, are lost. Even if Susie reads the text fluently, it is likely that some students do not have enough background knowledge of the topic or the vocabulary to comprehend what she is reading. Susie, whose primary goal is to dazzle the class with how much better she reads than Billy, does not pay much attention to what she reads, either. Once she finishes her part, Susie does not follow along with the rest of the class, but reads ahead because she can.

The popcorn popper continues, readers burn out one by one, and comprehension breaks down for everyone in the room.

I can't believe that any teacher, after reflecting on how this method of group reading really plays out in a classroom, would still use it. To assume that all students are following along is false. Think back to episodes when the student who was called on to read was obviously not following along and needed prompting to find the proper place to start. Poor readers dread getting called on to read, and good readers are bored by laboring through the reading of slower, less capable readers than themselves. Round-robin reading does nothing to foster a feeling of reading success in any but the best readers, and it doesn't build anyone's oral reading ability or fluency, either.

It is important for students to practice reading aloud in order to develop confidence and fluent oral reading ability, so how can we encourage students to read aloud, but avoid the negatives of round-robin and popcorn reading?

We need to consider whether we are asking students to read orally because we see a benefit for them in this practice or because it is a time-saver or a work saver for the teacher. Reading texts orally as a class takes a huge amount of time that we can little afford to waste on an activity that does not improve students' reading ability. There are better methods for increasing students' fluency than round-robin reading, including share-reading as I suggested earlier in this chapter. Here are some additional ideas:

Shortly after Thanksgiving break, I greet my students with a stack of papers. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have the packets for the Six Flags Reading Contest. You may have participated in this contest before. If you read 360 minutes between now and February 15, you can earn a free student ticket to Six Flags.”

Corbin is incredulous: “Three hundred and sixty minutes between now and
February
15? Mrs. Miller, we will read more than that in a month.”

“That's true, Corbin. My feeling is that if you are already doing the reading, you might as well get the free ticket.”

Daniel, my entrepreneur, asks, “If we read more, can we get more tickets?”