Literacy - C14 - Winter Quarter - Week 3

Routman lists five things she does to ensure students become excellent readers (p. 43). Choose one of these five. Support it with examples from Routman chapters 1-4, the optimal learning model, Cambourne?s conditions of learning, and/or examples from your placement (or non-examples if applicable). In other words, make a case for this point's importance.

Of the five things Routman lists as important to ensure students become excellent readers, I was most struck by #3: "Let students choose books they want to read and give them time to read them." For the most part I wholeheartedly concur with this point (with a couple of caveats mentioned below) because I think anything that fosters a child's sense of independence and freedom, especially when it comes to choosing reading matter, yields great results. When I was "interviewing" my sixth grader at Juanita last week, I asked him what his least favorite part of reading was, and he quickly said "the Houghton book," referring to the literature anthology that serves as the class' textbook for reading. He found most of the selections in the book to be boring and uninspiring, and much preferred to make his own reading list. This seems to fit in perfectly with Routman's emphasis on working towards independence and promoting a joy in learning (p. 48).

Having said that, I think it is important to stress that allowing students to choose the books they want to read becomes much more important in the higher elementary grades (4th grade and above), since my own observations have led me to believe that younger students require a bit more structure and guidance, both in reading skills AND reading choices (which is not to say that younger kids should also have some say in what they want to read). However, for example, last quarter, I was a bit bothered by my Juanita's second grader's choice of books, specifically, DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, which I think she was reading because of their popularity more than their appropriateness for her own interests (I was not only NOT convinced that she got much of the humor or substance of the book, or that she was retaining much of anything, but I also thought she was way too young for some of the book's dicier adolescent situations).

I was somewhat surprised in my DYAD placement, which was an 8th/9th grade language arts class at a junior high school, how little "choice" the students were given in terms of what was being read as a "class," and that most of the literature work were books that were being read by the class as a whole, rather than allow students to write about and explore the books they were reading on their own. While I understand it on a "practical" basis (imagine trying to assess 300 book reports on 300 different books), it seemed that the kids detested the literature anthology textbook as much as the Juanita sixth grader. As for myself, I have no recollection of being able to read books of my own choosing for any English course until perhaps being a senior in high school.

I think in the younger grades, a "structured" list of reading choices may be more appropriate, which is not to say that even a sixth grade teacher shouldn't "approve" selected books. I have noticed in my main placement that some kids will also choose inappropriate books, as well as books that are too easy or juvenile for them. A teacher has to walk a difficult path in granting kids freedom of choice while at the same time ensuring that they are making good and productive choices.

I also think that letting students "choose" their books is an excellent way of getting to know your students as readers (Routman, p. 20), since you can tell so much about a child based on those choices, and the interests that they reflect. Sometimes, even if they are making ill-informed or inappropriate choices, you can at least ascertain subject matter interests, and possibly steer the student to similar yet more appropriate books that would grab their interest, as well as helping students to become more diverse and well-rounded readers. For instance, in my main placement, there are still a few students obsessed with either Calvin & Hobbes or Pokemon, neither of which are really acceptable choices for book reports or "literature circles," but both of which can be used as springboards to try and lead the kids to more "literary" choices that they may be likely to respond to.

Of course the challenge remains for the teacher to be as well-informed and well-versed in an extraordinary number of books if they are to give thoughtful and productive assessments of the students' comprehension and choice of reading matter, and this is no easy task, as I discovered while trying to grade 30 book reports on 30different books, none of which I had the least familiarity with.