August 25, 2017
Engaged Readers Talk Back to Their Text
Kathryn E. Jennings, M.S. Ed. Reading Specialist, Educational Leadership
One of the many things
kids are awesome at is talking back. We all have the kids who simply like to
argue...
Argue because they want to do something.
Argue because they don't.
Argue
for the sake of arguing.
What is wonderful about argument is that it is necessary 21st Century skill, so I can work with that. ;-)
I remember my first year
in a literacy improvement classroom back in 2011.
"I am not reading a
book."
"Yes, you need to
choose a book to read. It can be whatever you want to read."
"I don't have
anything I want to read."
Omg...I swear this kid will read a book if it kills me. "Let's go find a book you will read."
Next, I always escorted these students to the library to choose a book. Our conversation (while in the library) included their interests, what was going on in their life, what problems they were having, what did they wish they knew more about, what music did they listen to,
what friends did they have/ not have, what did they watch on television, did
they use social media, etc.
YIKES! A million questions I would ask to find that
"just right" book.
Let me just tell you:
THIS
IS
THE
BIGGEST
s
t
r
u
g
g
l
e
EVER!
After this battle,
you have pretty much succeeded, and the next part is pretty easy.
I would ask the students
about their books. What do you like? What character is interesting? Are you
like that character? How? What is frustrating about your book?
Then, I would listen to
them tell me about the book. Here you can gauge if that student is truly
engaging in the book or not.
Well....needless to say,
not many students were indeed engaging with their books. Their eyes were
blazing like lightning across the page, so they could show they
"read" a lot--I think truly in hopes I would leave them alone.
Well, I am one of the
most annoying people you will meet. I am a nosy teacher. I get in your
business, especially your reading business. And I don't leave you alone until
you get it.
So, I figured out that
my struggling readers HAD to have something to do when they were reading. I
know, it sounds like I am defeating the purpose of reading, but think about how
many things they do at once every day. They text, talk, tweet, post on FB, SnapChat a friend, listen to music, and do various other things all at the same
time. They are multitaskers. In fact, if they aren't multitasking, they are
BORED! So, I gave them something else to do while they read.
Here is something I
tried, and for many, maybe I can even say most, of my students got to the point
they internalized the strategy. I borrowed the "Say Something"
bookmark from Kylene Beers. If you don't know what that is, follow this link: Say Something
Strategy.
In this strategy,
students simply TALK BACK to their books. I had my students choose one sentence
starter for each category and they wrote their response on post it notes,
eventually their responses became too long for little stickies, so they moved
on to notebook paper. Then we would talk about what they wrote. I also had them
record the page number from the book that inspired what they wrote.
Pretty soon, my kids could do 2 sentences per category. Eventually, they could turn and talk about them. And then they could share out (or yell out because that is what it became :-) ) what they wanted to share. It took a semester to get them to do this, but I had to tell them to quit talking back to ME and start talking back to the BOOK.
We used this strategy with EVERYTHING we read. EVERYTHING! I posted the categories ALL OVER the classroom and ALL OVER the schools. I told them to use these five categories for everything they read: predict/infer, question, clarify, connect, comment or visualize (they could choose).
I modeled these categories, I had them guide me through them, I had them show each other, I had them TALK BACK to each other about their books. I obsessed over talking back to text.
And guess what . . .
They did.
kids need to be in the