Kuunari

The series “Reading Notice and Note” features essays I wrote for a distance learning class while reading the book Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading by G. Kylene Beers and Robert E Probst. Overall, I found the book and the class enjoyable and hope this series helps others as they read and think about the book. 

In the last thirty years, written communication has radically changed with the advent of email, blogs, online news sources, and social media. The widespread use of personal electronic devices like smartphones and e-readers has caused even the book has changed. Whereas I used to always carry a book with me for times I would be on a train, bus, or waiting in line and needed something to read, I now have a nearly limitless supply of books available through apps like Amazon Kindle or Libby. The act of reading, on the other hand, has not changed.

As a reader, I am still charged with making meaning out of the text. As the authors of state: “Meaning can’t reside in the ‘ink spots on paper,’ [Rosenblatt] said. Meaning emerges as readers, with all their own thoughts and experiences and predispositions, interact or –to use Rosenblatt’s word — transact with those squiggles.” I still must decide if what I read is true after I make sense of what I am reading. I must “interact” with the text. That is what reading remains, regardless of what format the reading comes in.
As a fourth grade teacher, my students are still making the transition from decoding text to reading for comprehension and understanding.

They struggle to get information out of texts and are only beginning to be able to discuss author’s purpose and symbolism in longer texts. Most of my students pick graphic novels to read during independent reading. Most still do not understand that literature provides a window into other people’s experiences and can explore deep ideas about the human experience. For many of my students, while they can go deeply into a text in group discussions, they don’t yet do the same in their personal reading.

They still require a guide to help them “interact” with their texts. But they are beginning to become readers “who are curious, who dive into a text and can’t begin to think of coming up for air until they know what happens to Brian and his hatchet.”
The balance between non-fiction and fiction texts remains a struggle in my classroom. My students enjoy reading narrative chapter books as a class and enjoy the conversations we are able to have about them and we read a number of picture books in reading curriculum. While there are non-fiction texts in our reading curriculum, the students don’t seem to enjoy those texts as much. Most of our independent non-fiction text reading comes in our content areas.

As a IB-PYP school, we teach through inquiry, particularly when we investigate content areas. We provide a large number of books for our students to use to do research and answer questions our class has about our topic. There is higher engagement during this time but the students are still struggling to find pertinent information in a longer non-fiction text.
This engagement is vital for rigor. Rigor requires struggle, but students must be interested and invested to make the struggle meaningful and worthwhile. Otherwise, the students suffer from what the authors refer to as “rigor mortis,” or struggle without engagement. The rigor in reading must come hand in hand with engaging activities and texts for the students.