Ban the Book Report: Promoting Frequent and Enthusiastic Reading
by Graham Foster
(Pembroke Publishers, 2012 – Learn more)

Reviewed by Nicole Warchol

Every year in September when I survey my students, more than 50 percent consider themselves non-readers. I embrace this challenge, and for the most part I would consider myself successful in turning that tide. After getting over their initial resistance to voluntarily reading a book, my next step is to monitor and support my students’ comprehension and make sure that they are actively engaging with the pages of the story.

For the past few years my students have mostly been required to respond to their independent reading in the form of a letter in their reading journals. Sometimes they write to the author, a character, or me. Other times, they write to a classmate. I believe this is an effective method to gaining insight to their comprehension, but maybe it is not the only effective way.

Graham Foster’s book, Ban the Book Report: Promoting Frequent and Enthusiastic Reading, offers creative alternatives to my letters and journals. Although I do not assign the traditional book reports I was required to produce in own reading past, I am always looking for more reading response options.

What’s inside the book

I was most interested in the section of Foster’s book titled “Motivational Reading-Response Assignments.” The introduction states,

“Assignments have been designed for response to both fiction and nonfiction, and are planned to encourage personal response, including emotional response to text and the opportunity for students to consider items of personal interest. In addition, the assignments challenge close and thoughtful reading of text” (17).

The potential assignments cover the gamut of written and oral responses. Some suggested options include writing a diary entry for a character or a letter to the author, or presenting a talk-show interview. Here’s Foster describing one idea that caught my attention:

“Oral Reading of My Favorite Part of the Book benefits students who lack confidence in oral reading. Rather than stressful round-robin reading, this assignment allows student to prepare and practice their reading carefully before they present it to the class” (28).

Foster suggests that teachers who have assigned this particular activity two or three times a year have reported significant improvements. I think oral reading of favorite passages would be a good stretch for adolescent readers who fear nothing more than reading out loud.

There are also some suggestions in this book that I already use in my class, like writing a eulogy for a character. I foresee the material in Ban the Book Report: Promoting Frequent and Enthusiastic Reading as enhancing my existing eulogy assignment.

Student-friendly rubrics included

One aspect of the text that I would also like to highlight is that each assignment includes a student-friendly rubric. This element has the potential to increase student engagement and accountability. Another suggestion from the book that I will take forward is to not only give students the opportunity to assess their assignments but also to revise their own work.

The book also includes exemplars, an element that I found particularly useful. The exemplars are written about popular texts that many adolescent readers would find recognizable. So not only would the exemplars serve as models, but my students would be more intimately familiar with the content of the books themselves, which I think would further support their own reading responses. Some of the titles covered by exemplar texts are: Holes by Louis Sachar, The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan, Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen, and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.

Foster devotes chapter 7 to responding to informational texts. With the advent of the Common Core Standards, many educators are searching for new and innovative ways to incorporate non-fiction and informational texts into their classrooms, and they will definitely find this chapter valuable.

NOTE: You can review the entire text of Ban the Book Report at the Stenhouse website.

An unusual final chapter

All told, the book includes 20 different possible assignments. In the book’s final chapter, Foster reveals that Ban the Book Report grew out of a year-long PD project in two middle schools and writes:

As a professional development activity, a group of teachers reviewed the 20 assignments presented in this book and chose the goal to develop parallel reading-response assignments–tasks that offered varied personally significant options, each with a rubric written in student-friendly language and each with illustrative exemplars. In a day, the group successfully developed eight assignments, each with a rubric. Teachers left the workshop with the intention of gathering exemplars for the eight assignments. (94)

Foster then provides the first part of the teachers’ work (assignments and rubrics, already laid out in reproducible grids) and invites teachers to complete each assignment by gathering their own exemplars from student work. He also includes tips about selecting student samples and respecting privacy.

The eight assignments include casting the characters in a movie of the film, social media, poetry, an author award, song connections, a scrapbook, a dramatic script, and a readers’ theatre.

Some final thoughts

One area where I think Foster’s book could provide further guidance is assessment. Teachers would be applying the same rubric that students use to assess themselves. What happens when there is a discrepancy between their self-assessment and ours? Would this undermine their efforts and make them feel that their assessment is “wrong”? How can we maintain high expectations and validate their voice during this process?

I think this book would interest teachers just beginning to explore independent reading as well as more experienced teachers who are looking for new ways to expand how their students respond to their reading.

Foster also includes a reading survey, which would be useful for literacy teachers who have not already developed their own. A reading survey offers a way to gain insight into who your students are as readers and would allow you to make better book recommendations for them as well.

Like most teachers, I love to get my hands on reproducibles that can be utilized as-is or can be modified. Foster’s pages are filled with such resources, and I look forward to using them with my readers!

Nicole Warchol is a 7th grade language arts teacher and a teacher consultant for the Kean University National Writing Project. She lives in New Jersey with Rocco, her six-year old Rottweiler-German Shepherd. She is a voracious reader, who occasionally writes poetry. Ms. Warchol can be found on Twitter @MsNWarchol and on her blog at www.thecraziestbooklady.wordpress.com.

Reading Without Limits: Teaching Strategies to Build Independent Reading for Life
by Maddie Witter
(Jossey Bass, 2013 – Learn more)

Reviewed by Beverly Maddox

A beginning teacher with little reading instruction training or a veteran teacher who needs a refresher will find useful guidance in Reading Without Limits: Teaching Strategies to Build Independent Reading for Life by Maddie Witter.

The book’s goal is to provide teachers with ideas to improve students’ reading levels so that they eventually become fluent adult readers. Witter meets her goal by demonstrating a simple approach with three requirements:

• access to free-choice in reading materials at students’ comfort levels;

• participation in shared reading of texts and assigned reading chosen by the teacher;

• guided reading in which students with similar abilities and/or reading instruction needs form small groups based on similar abilities and/or instructional needs to read selections together to build their literacy skills.

Witter divides the 15 chapters into 5 logical parts:

1. Launching Lifelong Readers
2. Steps to Creating Lifelong Readers
3. Putting the Power of Choice, Shared, and Guided Reading to Work in Your Classroom or School
4. Steps to Enhance Lifelong Readers
5. Putting It All Together

Each of the 15 chapters integrates practical, straight-forward explanations of strategies with examples and suggestions drawn from experience and observation in real classrooms as well as the professional literature. The “Reading Without Limits Teacher Checklist” concludes the introduction and provides a guide to implementing organized, effective reading instruction. References, Notes, and a very useful Index round out the book.

This book almost brought me out of retirement

Reading Without Limits provides a comfortable yet inspiring read that makes the strategies Witter presents so doable that the reader will want to immediately begin to plan instruction. Although I’m a recently retired teacher, I itched to try some of the strategies (reading this book almost brought me out of retirement several times).

My former colleagues and I would have found Chapter One especially invaluable. Some 12 years before I retired, under pressure to raise student performance on benchmark tests, my district directed all middle school English teachers to assess each student’s reading level in late fall and then again before the state’s Benchmark Test.

Administering the test to all our students individually confounded many English teachers. A brief “in-service” on how to administer and score an oral reading assessment — then administer the appropriate independent reading assessment — didn’t allay the stress. Hours of teachers’ planning time were spent on initial assessments, which weren’t completed until just a month before the big test and weren’t all that useful in planning instruction.

Too bad Witter’s book wasn’t available at the time, since Chapter One, “Finding Students’ Reading Levels,” describes and explains how to do just that — effectively and succinctly. From Vygotsky’s Zones through inventories and running records, Witter tells how a teacher can determine the reading level of each student in a timely way, match kids and books, and turn a classroom into a supportive reading community.

For a teacher blessed and stressed with students like those in my former classrooms, Chapter One alone is worth the price of this book—but that could be true of any other chapter, too.

Aha’s! and Oh Yeah’s!

As a retired English teacher, I found part of the enjoyment of Reading Without Limits came from the occasional “AHA!” moments when I recognized an instructional strategy I had used “back in the day” and realized why it had been effective.

I also remembered quite a few times when I struggled to keep students engaged with difficult texts. Chapter 4, “Shared Reading to Teach, Reinforce, and Challenge,” (for instance) inspired me to wish I could have a “do over” and try some of the strategies Witter describes. Throughout the book, Witter references various literacy instruction gurus for support or example, twice sending me to my bookshelf to find the original quote in a dog-earred book and leaving me wondering how I had missed seeing that useful bit when I most needed it.

Many ideas throughout this book will be familiar to teachers steeped in the reading/writing workshop canon and the Heinemann/Stenhouse stable of insightful authors on literacy instruction. Those books and others have clearly informed Witter’s practices. This savvy early 30-something teacher has integrated her and her colleagues’ experiences and practices with the most useful of commercial resources to produce a valuable guide for teachers committed to improving student literacy.

Reading Without Limits is just what the third or fourth year middle level teacher struggling with classrooms of students in the usual range of reading abilities needs. Teachers who use the book throughout the school year will be grateful for the index and references. A year or two with this book and the resources at the Reading Without Limits website to guide their work, and they’ll be ready for bigger doses of Fontas and Pinnell, Harvey Daniels, Stephanie Harvey, Jeff Wilhelm, Laura Robb, Carol Jago, Stephen Krashen, Lucy Calkins, Kylene Beers, and more.

As for me, I’m sending my review copy to a young middle school English teacher in a small Ozarks town tomorrow. And I just sent my MiddleWeb editor this note:

This book is a winner. It could easily replace a foot or 18 inches of shelf space stuffed with ‘professional’ books about literacy instruction that I hardly found time to read while teaching.”

Beverly Maddox taught in the middle and high school grades for 25 years and retired from the Little Rock (Arkansas) School System after coordinating the district’s AVID program during her final four years. Before becoming a teacher, she managed operations for a community action agency and directed a national US Department of Energy weatherization demonstration project. Bev Maddox has consulted in the areas of interdisciplinary teaching, reading, instructional planning, teaching research and information seeking skills, classroom management and parent-school relations.

Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading 
By Kylene Beers and Robert Probst
(Heinemann, Nov. 15, 2012   Learn more)

Reviewed by Sandy Wisneski

Let me begin at the end. In the acknowledgements at the end of  Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading, the authors pay homage to what I call Teacher Truth:

“You’ll try what’s in here; find ways to make the lessons better; change them so that they are uniquely ours. You’ll keep teaching through the foolishness that seems to be part of education these days. When people talk of measuring the “value added” by a teacher, we tell them we don’t need complicated math formulas. (silent cheer.) They only need to look at you -­‐ you arrive early, stay late, celebrate your students’ successes, worry over those who need perhaps more than you can give, and always wonder what else you can do. We laugh at the thought that your value is measurable by a test score.”

Sold! Buy the book. Encore!

The book’s structure

Rigor. Interaction. These two words describe the strategies used in the real-life classroom situations related in this book by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst. Solid theory supporting practical application — that’s the foundation undergirding the six “signposts” the authors use to point the way to strengthen readers of all levels.

What are these signposts? They are, in order of appearance:

1. Contrasts and Contradictions
2. Aha Moments
3. Tough Questions
4. Words of the Wiser
5. Again and Again
6. Memory Moment

Six lessons. Six signposts. Six anchor questions. One goal: to help teachers foster rigorous reading and high-level thinking. The book emphasizes three commonalities among those “signposts”: stand out features in text, generalizable language, and insightful comprehension.

Each of these signposts has a chapter with scripts from actual lessons in the classroom, called “Classroom Close – Ups,” complete with thought bubbles and highlighted noteworthy parts. This is a lovely feature for those of us who don’t have time to sit down for the whole show but want the highlights.

Reproducibles. Charts. Surveys. Text excerpts for teaching the signpost lessons. All found in the book itself: a complete cast waiting in the wings for you to bring them out when their part is needed and your audience is ready.

It’s the stuff you try to teach the kids every day

The six signposts identified by Beers and Probst are not unfamiliar concepts to most ELA and literacy teachers, but they are presented in a way that places them naturally and gradually in your classroom. These concepts aren’t on laminated posters lining your room. They are seated at your tables with your students. They are doodling questions on the page margins. They are putting their fists under their chins and asking your students to think. These strategies are not about you. They are about the students, and hopefully they’ll walk out the door in students’ pockets with their iPods. Then they can plug in whatever strategy they learned the next time they need it. Music to a teacher’s ears.

Beers and Probst made this point at the end of their book:

Much as we hope our students will have the experience of losing themselves in a book, at the same time we hope that they’ll have the experience of finding themselves in a book.”

Notice & Note: Strategies for Closed Reading shows readers effective strategies that will help them navigate and “noodle” as they read. That’s how the lost get found.

Sandy Wisneski is lead teacher at Catalyst Charter Middle School, which opened in the fall of 2012. She is the district webmaster, tech mentor, and yearbook advisor as well as a new teacher mentor. Over the past 37 years she has become certified as a Flat Classroom Teacher and obtained her masters in reading. She enjoys challenging students to “take ownership” for their learning and to be effective digital citizens in the world.

Reading Ladders: Leading Students from Where They Are to Where We’d Like Them to Be
By Teri S. Lesesne
(Heinemann, 2010  Learn more)

Reviewed by Mark A. Domeier

I anticipated reading the latest educational ideas from Teri S. Lesesne in Reading Ladders because I am constantly looking for ways to engage my middle school readers and find ways to improve their enjoyment of reading. Lesesne has a solid foundation of ideas and has given me ideas to ponder, though there are times that her ideas seem like something geared more to larger communities than the rural population in which I teach.

Moving up the ladder

The basis of the reading ladder is to find where the individual student’s reading ability and interest lie and to work with each student to continue to find books he or she might enjoy, while at the same time gradually increasing the reading level to keep the challenge level there. The hardest part of teaching middle school students is trying to overcome the “I Hate Reading” mantra that so many of them spout, and Lesesne has many ideas that the average teacher might not have considered to get past that familiar chant.

Nonfiction for pleasure!

An area I had not considered much is finding more non-fiction materials for students to read for pleasure. Every state has some standardized test that focuses largely on non-fiction readings, but many of us continue to use non-fiction only in preparation for these tests. In reality, according to Lesesne, we could reach many of these reluctant readers by offering them non-fiction books about activities or items they have an interest in, be it a hobby or a favorite sport. (Editor’s note: Find more of Lesesne’s ideas about nonfiction reading ladders, including history topics, at her Reading Ladders wiki.)

Simple ideas like this form a solid base for the notion of creating a reading ladder for each student. Lesesne provides many example ladders to show how to track the progress of students though one or more years. Finding a starting point and an ultimate goal can be tricky, but she details the set-up of this idea quite well.

One size doesn’t fit all

To Lesesne’s credit, she doesn’t claim that her ideas are a cure-all for the reading woes we see in our classrooms. She is very clear about taking her ideas and customizing them for what works in our individual settings. Too many other authors I’ve read seem to think they have the ultimate answer, but any teacher with a modicum of experience knows that ideas change, and we have to mold and shape things to fit in our classrooms.

Implementation challenges

I have two main issues with Lesesne’s otherwise good plan. The first is that I don’t have the time to keep up with all the young adult literature that is out there. I wouldn’t even know where to begin in making recommendations for many of my students. I can’t count on our media center specialist either, since she spends most of her time with our elementary students.

The other problem deals with the sheer amount of work this would take to develop ladders for all my students. When you see 130 students a day, who has the time or energy to fit together a plan for each of them? Granted, some might fit in the same general pattern, thus eliminating some of the work, but this thought staggered me.

A valuable quick read

That being said, I do plan to take some of the basic ideas, such as keeping better track of what my students read, and adapting them into my classroom. A visual ladder for the students will hopefully perk their interests and might even inspire some others to talk about and try out new books that they see others have read.

Kudos to Lesesne for a good idea. Despite some flaws, her humbleness and unique perspective make Reading Ladders worth a look. At 90 pages, it won’t take you long to read, and if you only gain one thing to use in your classroom, you’ll be able to count it as time well spent.

Mark A. Domeier is an English teacher at New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva schools in Minnesota, where he has taught middle school English for 17 years. He has a BS degree from Winona State University and a Master’s degree from St. Mary’s University, Minnesota. Domeier recently published his debut novel, Heroics 101 (available on Amazon), a middle grades novel about realistic super heroes. He is also a weekly columnist for the NRHEG Star Eagle, a local newspaper.

Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina and Passion in Adolescent Readers
by Penny Kittle
(Heinemann, 2012 – Learn more)

Reviewed by Kevin Hodgson

Penny Kittle’s descriptions of the readers in her classrooms, the ones who expertly pretend to read and then develop evasive strategies to fool the teacher into thinking they have been reading, were so spot-on in Book Love that I felt she may have been eavesdropping in my own sixth grade classroom.

Surely, I thought, she knows my collection of students who don’t seem to find joy in reading and therefore don’t read. That’s when I realized that Kittle is exploring a theme unfortunately common across so many of our classrooms. With that sense of shared purpose, I eagerly dove into her book to try to ferret out some solutions.

Penny Kittle delivers, on many levels. Book Love is a both an ode to the power of reading to expand our interests and intellect, and a guide to encouraging even the most reluctant readers in our classrooms to read and enjoy more books.

Woefully underprepared readers

Kittle centers her discussion here around a few main ideas. The first concept is that students don’t read nearly enough, particularly if they are college-bound. In fact, her interviews with college professors and former students now in college show that most students are woefully unprepared for the amount and depth of reading expected at the university level.

Second, students don’t have enough choice in what they do read, or enough guidance to find the books and texts that will engage them as readers. For some, it’s just that they have not had the right book fall into their hands at the right moment in time.

Finally, Kittle maintains that too many students don’t self-identify themselves as readers, and this lack of identity feeds into the negative loop of students not seeing reading as something valuable for life, not just something required at school.

The voices of students

Book Love brings us into Kittle’s classrooms (she is a literacy coach and a classroom teacher, too) and we get to see her work directly with kids, even the ones who honestly claim to have read only sporadically and sparingly over the years. It’s interesting to note that her conversations with mentor Donald Graves (a legend in the writing workshop world) led her to videotape interviews with her students, who open up with honesty about their reading habits and interests, or lack thereof.

Those interviews, and her own observations, help formulate Kittle’s suggestions for reaching all readers and encouraging stamina in reading and love of books. Her tips on how to have classroom book talks to spark interest, how to stage short one-on-one book conferences guided by inquiry questions, how to find personal fluency levels, and ways to set realistic goals for students are all valuable for any level. She also makes it clear that classrooms must have engaging libraries of books, readily available for students. The classroom has to be immersed in literacy and love of books.

Creating reader-friendly schools and classrooms

Kittle contends that a school community and a classroom environment can be established in ways that instill the love of reading. To create this effect, teachers and school leaders should:

• Provide access for students to a wide range of books that appeal to a wide range of readers. This should happen through a combination of libraries, classrooms and home environments.

• Be flexible with our view of texts and have a plan for dealing with students who don’t want to read books but will read other kinds of texts (newspapers, magazines, manuals, etc.). That said, Kittle frowns on any kind of electronics during quiet reading due to the distraction factor.

• Maintain silence during sustained reading time, and value that reading time in the classroom. Kittle wonders why so many teachers make silent reading a homework activity instead of providing time in the classroom. She notes that when reading becomes homework the reluctant readers are more apt to turn to SparkNotes and other summary sites rather than read the assigned book.

• Establish clear and consistent expectations from student readers. Much of Kittle’s book lays out how she and her students do this:  keeping track of pages read over a semester; establishing a “next read” book list; writing self-reflections about what it means to be a reader as part of a final project.

• Recommend books to students. Kittle suggests we do this with more deliberate thought and with high frequency, over a range of genres and authors. While it is better for teachers to have read books that you are recommend, Kittle notes that you could also be sharing books you want to read, and explaining why. The idea is to set a spark in a student’s mind about particular books.

• Deal directly with the non-readers by having teachers “… invite kids into reading, not force them into it. We want suggestions and encouragement and a commitment to helping students find a good-fit book. This is job one: modeling enjoyment, passion and the value of reading (145).” Don’t blame a disinterest in reading on past teachers, the world of technology or the home environment. Don’t give up on students as readers. As Kittle shows in vignettes throughout the book, when the reading bug catches, it can be transformative in the lives of young people.

The Book Love Foundation

To her credit, Penny Kittle has put her money where her mouth is, so to speak. In concert with this book, Kittle and her husband (with support from Heinemann) have established The Book Love Foundation for creating libraries of books that can be donated to classrooms that lack funding and external support. (For more information about The Book Love Foundation, visit http://booklovefoundation.org/ ) Her intention is to donate libraries to classrooms every single year.

I’ll leave you with a final quote from Kittle:

“I believe every child in America needs access to books that will keep him or her turning pages, racing to the end, discovering new ideas, and learning to understand the diversity in our world. I believe all children deserve books they can and will want to read and teachers who will guide them to improve as readers. (169).”

Amen to that.

Kevin Hodgson is a sixth grade teacher in Southampton, Massachusetts, and is the technology liaison with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project. Kevin blogs regularly at Kevin’s Meandering Mind and tweets more often than is healthy under his @dogtrax handle.

Get It Done: Writing and Analyzing Informational Texts to Make Things Happen
by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Michael W. Smith, and James E. Fredricksen
(Heinemann, 2012 – Learn more)

Reviewed by Kevin Hodgson

I was fortunate to be in the audience at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the National Writing Project and listened as Wilhelm, Smith and Fredricksen wowed the crowd during a collaborative keynote address to a roomful of teachers. The three teacher/writers had just put out a collection of three books that explore connections to reading and writing. Get It Done is their resource on informational text. The others explore narrative texts and argumentative texts.

All three are nicely connected to the thrust of the Common Core, although the authors were clear that they began planning and writing long before the Common Core became public. (Still, you can imagine the thrill of the Heinemann editors when they realized that three books were being developed along three main threads of the Common Core.)

Get It Done is a treasure trove of helpful insights about why we need to care about the teaching of informational text, and it offers up strategies for not just teaching how to read and interpret these kinds of texts, but how to make them meaningful and useful to students.

The Get it Done mantra of the book’s title echoes to the fact that information that is processed and understood can be used in the world to do things, to make things happen, to create opportunities for action and understanding, to explain complicated ideas to others in meaningful ways. And the authors (Wilhelm seems to be the lead writer in this book) are right on the mark when they hint that educators just do not do enough to teach this kind of text to students, even though the real world (you know, that place outside of our classroom bubbles) is overflowing with informational text.

The authors are right on the mark when they hint that educators just do not do enough to teach this kind of text to students, even though the real world is overflowing with it.

I appreciated that the book begins by laying out the idea of “elements of informational text structures” as well as “the five kinds of knowledge” that inform our understanding of information and explanatory texts.  They also break out a series of actions that teachers can consider when working with students, from what they call Composing to Plan, to Composing to Practice, to Composing Rough and Final Drafts, to Composing to Transfer Meaning. These pedagogical and heuristic framing ideas set the stage for the authors to then dive down into a wide range of text formats:

• Listing and Naming
• Summarizing
• Describing
• Defining
• Comparing/Contrasting
•  Classifying
• Exploring cause and effect
• Explaining problems and solutions

I also found it insightful to read through the many “margin notes” that are in the book, as the authors – sometimes individually, sometimes collectively – add further insights to various topics of the main text. The margin notes also make explicit connections to the Common Core, and highlight areas where exemplar lesson plans and ideas are located. In fact, the three educators here bring in many examples of classroom practice, which I found to be valuable and enlightening.

Many of us need to do more with explicit teaching of informational text, and Get It Done is an excellent map of teaching strategies, rationale and understanding that can ease that transition to a more balanced use of texts that so many of us teachers (in Common Core states and otherwise) are going to have to make.

Kevin Hodgson is a sixth grade teacher in Southampton, Massachusetts, and is the technology liaison with the Western Massachusetts Writing Project. Kevin blogs regularly at Kevin’s Meandering Mind and tweets more often than is healthy under his @dogtrax handle. He created the flowchart, possibly on a napkin at his favorite coffeehouse.

Teaching Students to Read Like Detectives: Comprehending, Analyzing, and Discussing Text
By Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, Diane Lapp
(Solution Tree Press, 2012 – Learn more)

Reviewed by Joan Cansdale

TEACHER:  Let’s talk about this book we’ve read. What do you notice about the main character?
STUDENT #1: She’s nice.
STUDENT #2: Yeah, she’s a good person.
TEACHER: What are the clues in the book that make you think she’s “nice” and “good’?
STUDENT #3: She does good stuff just like my big sister.
STUDENT #1: Right, just like my cousin when she watches me after school.
STUDENT #4: Or like my brother when he helps me with my homework.
TEACHER: What does the character do in the story that reminds you of your sister, or cousin, or brother?
STUDENT #2: She is nice to people.
TEACHER: Can you show me where in the story you see the character being nice to people?
STUDENT #3: It’s everywhere in the whole story!

How often have you experienced a scenario like this in your classroom?

Many times students are able to make connections between what they read and their own lives, but cannot pinpoint specific textual evidence to support those connections. In addition, the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts require that students engage in text-supported thinking, discussion, and writing.

If, like me, you sometimes struggle in bringing students back to the text to support their answers, you will appreciate the variety of strategies, examples and resources that the authors include in Teaching Students to Read Like Detectives: Comprehending, Analyzing, and Discussing Text. Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Diane Lapp state that this book is about “teaching students to return to the text in their discussions.” Seems like a modest goal, right? But those of us who work with readers of varying abilities in our classrooms know what a challenge it can be!

Teachers of all grade levels and content areas can better meet this challenge by using this resource to follow Common Core project editor David Coleman’s suggestion that “students…read like detectives and write like reporters.”

The introduction provides an overview of changes in our perceptions of literacy, as well as a sampling of how the Common Core State Standards impact English Language Arts in K-12 education.  The authors also treat us to a crash course in the history of literacy education theories in the United States, and then swiftly move on to a discussion of the basic principles of effective literacy instruction, including classroom culture and lesson structure, as well as the major comprehension strategies.

Teaching “text-supported thinking and collaboration”

With this background knowledge in place, the next three chapters – more than half of the book – become a handbook for teaching “text-supported thinking and collaboration.” Fisher, Frey and Lapp take us through the three CCSS text types (argumentation, narration, and exposition) with lively explanations punctuated by transcripts of student and teacher conversations that illustrate the various strategies and concepts central to each type.

These scenarios are drawn from various grade levels (elementary, middle, and high school) as well as content areas, and include examples from science, social studies and even a Family and Consumer Science class. Content-area teachers as well as English Language Arts teachers will find these chapters a great reference tool for planning meaningful classroom discussions.

Teacher-friendly features

Teachers familiar with Harvey and Goudvis’s Comprehension Toolkit, or with the work of Lucy Calkins’ Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, will recognize similar language and approaches to instruction such as accountable talk and the gradual release of responsibility model of instruction, but you need not be “in the know” to understand and apply the myriad suggestions made throughout.

The authors have thoughtfully included a slew of diagrams, tables, photographs, rubrics, illustrations, and other resources that make their work teacher-friendly. For example, in the chapter on expository texts, there is a table that lists the various types of text structures that may be encountered, along with signal words that can help readers identify the type of text they are reading. Also included are 13 pages of references and resources that run the gamut from Click, clack, moo: Cows that Type to Ameliorating children’s reading-comprehension difficulties: A randomized controlled trial.

Three-dimensional reading, digitally speaking

You may be asking, “What about digital texts?” Don’t worry; they are covered, too. In fact, the relatively slim 15-page Chapter Five “Analyzing and Discussing New-Media Texts” is my favorite part of the book.

The authors discuss how comprehension may be challenged and/or enhanced by the non-linear reading methods required by hypertext, identifying the process as three-dimensional reading. They also address the issue of reader engagement in new-media texts. The chapter concludes with an extended classroom example that shows how a middle-grades teacher uses the gradual release of responsibility model while incorporating various types of media in a research project.

Wherever you are on your journey with your students to improve text-based critical thinking and discussion, you will find a wealth of ideas and resources here to speed you on your way.

Joan Cansdale is a middle grades educator and English Language Arts supervisor. She enjoys networking with other educators on Twitter @joancansdale. Joan also recently embarked on a mission to read all of Walter Dean Myers’ 105 published titles. She blogs about her progress at http://wdmandme.wordpress.com

What Every Middle School Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests (From Someone Who Has Written Them)
by Charles Fuhrken
(Stenhouse Publishers, 2012 – Learn more)

A K-5 version is available.

Reviewed by Rebecca Crockett

Frustrated with the lack of information from my state testing agency, and after trying several other books promising to help me prepare my students for my state’s achievement exam, I went searching for a way to give my students all the tools they would need to succeed on these tests.

I was sick of test prep that required my students to read boring chunks of texts with accompanying worksheets and endless repetition — tired of “strategies” that killed their desire to read and left them feeling defeated during testing time because they didn’t know what the questions were asking and how to go about answering them.

Then I found Charles Fuhrken’s book.

Teacher-friendly and ready to apply

From the introduction’s list of “tips” we give students that turn out to be just plain wrong (many of which I didn’t even realize would lead my students astray) — to the appendices of reproducible handouts to use with lessons — What Every Middle School Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests did not disappoint.

Fuhrken, who has considerable teaching experience in addition to his work as a reading and writing test specialist, knows how to communicate with his audience. Written in clear and concise prose without any education-ese, this book was an uncomplicated read, organized in a teacher-friendly format and ready to apply immediately.

Finally I found a book that not only describes a problem that teachers encounter in the classroom, but also explains how to solve it. With Fuhrken’s help, I can now give my students strategies they can remember and use when it’s time to take reading tests, and best of all, I can do that using rich and engaging activities that integrate well into the content I teach.

Inside the book

The book is broken into four sections: Building Understanding about Tests, Exploring Strategies for Reading Tests, Putting Strategies to Work, and Demonstrate Understandings with Reading Activities. From the first section I gained a personal understanding of how reading tests are written — things I never knew. Section One is also filled with ideas to teach students the vocabulary of tests and the different skills of test taking to build their confidence in their ability to be successful test-takers from the get-go.

Section Two focused on the 30 most commonly assessed standards, grouped into six chapters by type, such as vocabulary development and literary elements. What I appreciated most about Section Two was the listing of various words and alternate versions of question-wording that might be used for the same type of test question. (For example: theme, lesson, moral, what the character learns, the author’s main purpose.)

Ever since I had a student come back after a test telling me that I never taught them about “descriptors” (of course I did, but we called them adjectives!) I have been mindful of the difference between the vocabulary of the classroom and our standards documents, and the phrasing that may show up on the tests.

A bit too much detail?

The chapters in Section Two follow the same basic format, with an introduction to the type of assessment question followed by some basic strategies to teach students. Each chapter concludes with specific example questions and a comprehensive analysis of how a test-taker should approach each example — what might throw students off, and what strategies can help them discern the correct answer.

I found the first few pages of each chapter to be most helpful, supplying generalized information that applied to most questions students would encounter and which I could easily integrate into my instruction. I was personally more interested in overall strategies than ones specified for a certain question, and I found reading two or three pages that deconstructed each question a bit tedious. The book was certainly thorough, but this part dragged for me.

Much of the information on how to get students to see the correct answer employed strategies like substitution and going back to the text — strategies most teachers use already. I didn’t need the explanation there. I did, however, appreciate the ideas for visualization, the strategy to “chunk and jot down,” and the idea of teaching “anchor examples.”

Plenty of practical advice

A full third of the book (Sections Three and Four) is devoted to practical classroom application! This is what I hope for in all my education reading — not just theory and advice but solutions that are realistic for the regular classroom.

Section Three takes the form of practice “tests” with side notes on how to go about answering the questions for use in mini-lessons or think-alouds. Section Four gives clearly subdivided activities that easily fit into existing lessons and enhance student learning of text while being a part of test preparation. All the handouts needed are explained and included in the appendices. Each activity is really more a mini-lesson or extension of what you are already teaching and includes resources, procedure, assessment, and sometimes extension and student examples.

Other books have given me ways to integrate their ideas into my lessons, but the lessons here focus on the same content I would be teaching anyway — but with small tweaks that allow more focus on particular skills. Some activities are ones I already use, in fact, such as found poems, but are shown in a new way with new application. The best part is that students might actually enjoy the activities while they learn, which I can’t say about the test prep I’ve done in the past.

The approach given in What Every Middle School Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Tests is exactly what I have been looking for and this is one book that will most definitely not be sitting on the back shelf gathering dust.

Rebecca Crockett teaches language arts and reading to seventh and eighth graders and enjoys blending technology and media literacy into her lessons as well as working with other teachers across content areas. She lives in north central Idaho with her husband and two young children. She is an avid reader and sometimes writer for her own enjoyment and to practice what she preaches.   

Teaching Reading in the Content Areas: If Not Me, Then Who?
by Vicki Urquhart & Dana Frazee
(ASCD, 2012 – Learn more)

Reviewed by Sharon Nelson

Vicki Urquhart and Dana Frazee, communications manager and principal consultant respectively for McREL, have created a valuable 3rd edition update to Teaching Reading in the Content Areas:  If Not Me, Then Who?  This collection of useful reading strategies comes at a most opportune time to help teachers prepare for the Common Core standards, where reading skills become the responsibility of all.

As mentioned in the introduction, the challenges teachers face include teaching students who have been skimming, scanning and flipping versus using in-depth reading skills; an ELL population boom; and the introduction and usage of the Common Core standards. These challenges have evoked a greater worldwide interest in teaching effective reading skills for the 21^st century.

Not surprisingly, the authors tell us, research shows that U.S. high school students, who must possess skills related to a variety of content areas in history, math and science, have shown “markedly less” progress than 4th-8th graders in meeting pre-CCSS reading standards. The Common Core standards, which demand greater critical thinking skills, will show our students falling further behind unless content area teachers at all levels become trained in teaching literacy in their classrooms. However, literary professionals, unfamiliar with content-specific demands, find it difficult to help teachers learn “disciplinary literacy.”

A look inside the book

Part I of Teaching Reading in the Content Areas effectively describes the interlocking gears of disciplinary literacy: knowledge, strategies, and goals and dispositions.

• The knowledge gear includes understanding how the reader constructs the meaning of a text, realizing the importance of prior knowledge and metacognition (the ability to think and control the thinking process before, during and after reading) to learning, integrating reading and writing, and initiating student collaboration.

• The strategy gear includes pre-, during and after-reading strategies, tactics that effective readers employ but are not usually taught by all content teachers.

• The goals and dispositions gear explains how to motivate students and invite them to share responsibility for their own learning.

Despite the evidence supporting the importance and effectiveness of these strategies, they are not commonly practiced by K-12 teachers. They are demanding tasks that require professional instruction and support. But the benefits are significant.

Research-based resources

To the rescue, Urqhart and Frazee provide 40 research specific strategies to implement all of the above recommendations. Some strategies are applicable to all content areas; others are effective when teachers who are experts in their fields adapt them to their discipline. Most of the activities call for the necessity of the instructor to provide an initial example of what is expected. Therefore, a thoughtful reflection about what the teacher expects is necessary.

A common strategy included is related to KWL: it’s the Directed Reading/Thinking Activity (DR/TA) and is used as a pre-reading and after-reading exercise. As students preview the text selection, the instructor points out the title, subheadings, pictures, and graphic aids. Students then write their response to the following questions on a DR/TA form:  what I know I know and what I think I know. After discussing with partners and revealing misconceptions about the topic, students predict what I think I’ll learn from the reading. After reading, the students revisit their predictions and confirm, revise, or reject the ideas based on the reading with what I know I learned.  This is a simple yet powerful strategy for all content areas.

Graphic organizers and visual aids

Also provided are 7 different graphic organizer examples suitable for literature, social studies, science, art, and math. Together, they illustrate the ease of utilizing professional development and team work to develop one strategy beneficial to all.

The PLAN (Predict-Locate-Add-Note) example is an informational tool that encourages students to create a visual organizer for taking notes during reading. The written visual for pre, during and after-reading helps students recognize connections and self-assess their knowledge.

Another valuable strategy, among the many, is the vocabulary definition card. This card provides the teacher with information necessary to adapt instruction before, during, and after the lesson or unit.

With the rich, detailed descriptions of the various strategies, content teachers will definitely benefit from utilizing the ASCD/McREL book to process and implement 21^st century literacy skills. Likewise, instructional coaches, like me, will find a resource that provides hands-on tools for frustrated content-area teachers who ask, “How can I teach reading, I’m a (fill in the blank) teacher?”

Sharon Talley Nelson is a curriculum coach and library media specialist at Ellsworth (KS) High School. During her career, she’s also been a media specialist and lead teacher at the elementary level, taught English/Language Arts and received awards for her innovative use of technology. She holds a masters degree in instructional technology from Kansas State University.

The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child
by Donalyn Miller
(Jossey-Bass, 2009 – Learn more)

Reviewed by Ellen Berg

If you’re looking for a how-to book organized around the Common Core standards for reading, this book is not for you. There is nothing rigid or prescriptive about this text — no shyster-y Follow these steps and your kids’ reading scores will skyrocket.

If anything, this text is a love letter to reading and the ways teachers can support students’ journeys to their own love affairs with books.

Donalyn Miller was a sixth grade language arts and social studies teacher when she published her teacher-classic, The Book Whisperer, in 2009 (this year, she’s moved to a self-contained 4th grade classroom). She chronicles her shift from traditional reading instruction organized around novel units and worksheets to a reading workshop.

In the past, despite her enthusiasm and hard work, Miller found her students “were robots, trudging through the unit and completing the assigned activities. Reading was work, another job to finish in the daily grind of school…the children were not engaged.”

Miller eventually found her path to engaging all readers in her classroom, developing dormant and enthusiastic readers by allowing for choice, response, time for reading, and support for each child’s reading development.  As she redefined her instruction, her students’ enthusiasm for books rose.

Matching Kids with Books

Perhaps the most powerful strategy Miller uses is one of helping each child find books that fit their academic needs and interest levels. As she gets to know students, she pulls piles of books she thinks they’ll enjoy and sets them on their desks before they come in. Through read-alouds, book talks and conferences with students, she exposes them to different genres and authors that might scratch their reading itch. Miller is relentless, refusing to give up or to give in on the requirement for each student to read 40 books each year in varying genres, regardless of how resistant they are when they reach her class.

But what about test scores???

To be certain, we live in a world where standardized test scores have become the driver of curriculum. Out of fear, many teachers use materials designed to mimic the tests and focus on discrete knowledge.

To the question of testing (in Texas, no less), Miller writes, “I know that the amount of reading and response that my students do is the best preparation for this assessment.  Frankly, the state’s goal is narrower than mine.” (133)  By reading widely and critically, students are better prepared to tackle questions on state assessments. Her primary beef with standardized testing is that “the high stakes nature of these tests has disrupted quality reading instruction.”

What does quality reading instruction look like?

Chapter 6, “Cutting the Teacher Strings,” is the perfect place for any teacher looking to redefine their teaching practice under a workshop umbrella. Miller identifies traditional teaching practices such as book reports and round-robin reading and suggests alternative strategies that elicit deeper, more engaged responses from students. However, shifting activities without the philosophical shift to one of wanting students “to become life readers” is not effective. The primary message of this book is that our beliefs about school and the purpose of teaching must change if we want kids to become avid readers.

I highly recommend this book to both long-time reading workshop teachers and those beginning to think about dipping their toes in. Miller is real, inspiring and relentlessly optimistic about the possibilities for kids who become avid readers. Whether you need to be reminded why you teach the way you do or you need inspiration to take those first steps, this book is for you.

(See MiddleWeb’s interview with Donalyn Miller here. Also visit her Education Week blog and the Nerdy Book Club.)

Ellen Berg teaches multiage humanities to sixth, seventh and eighth grade students at a progressive charter school in San Diego, California. Ellen wrote weekly reflective diaries about her teaching experiences as a sixth grade teacher in inner city St. Louis, Missouri for the first iteration of MiddleWeb and has been published in Middle Ground, Education Week, and other professional journals.  She is developing an online project called Renegade Schoolhouse focused on positive education reform — set to launch in November, 2012.