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. 

I am a believer that a classroom needs to have a balanced approach to how the texts students read are chosen. Students need opportunities to both read books of their own choosing as well as texts from a variety of genres and styles. As a fourth grade teacher in a International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program, many of the texts we read in reading tie into the central ideas of our transdisciplinary themes.

Each year I refine and expand the list of texts I have to choose from to read with my students. When considering the text complexity of a book, I typically utilize a system similar to the one suggested in Notice and Note. I look at the complexity of a text quantitatively, qualitatively, and reader and task considerations. 

A number of years ago, I read a rather poor teaching book that held within it a gem of an idea: students should be reading award winning literature. It remarked that award winning novels have already been judged to be of high quality and high engagement for readers, and by using awards to help guide the books students are asked to read in my classroom, my students are reading and engaging with high quality literature.

When you consider the massive growth of graphic novels in the last 10 years in youth literature, it becomes even more important that students have opportunities to read traditional novels as they are picking that type of book out to read on their own less and less. 

I have moved away from read alouds and more toward shared reading, where each student has a copy of the book as we read. This year we’ve read 8 novels together, which I am finding to be a challenging pace to maintain. In the future, I will likely reduce the number of novels we read, and spend more time focused on close reading the texts.

I also want to provide my students with more opportunities to read non-fiction text and poetry texts in close reading activities. Those are parts of my reading instruction that I feel that my students would benefit from additional opportunities. 

When considering text complexity, the first consideration for me is the readers and the tasks. Many of the books we read will tie into our transdisciplinary themes, supplementing our study of science, social studies, health, art, and other topics. I also want to make sure that the books and text that I pick will pique my students interest. It is vital as a teacher that I understand the interests and strengths of my students as we work together to make meaning from texts.

The second, and often simultaneous, consideration is the quantitative measure of the text, often through either Fountas and Pinnell or Lexile. That will give me a rough estimate of how likely my students are to struggle with the text. The final consideration for me is qualitative. Much of the qualitative dimensions refer to the work that will be required to fully engage in the text and the support or scaffolding I might need to provide for my students.

Honestly, it also is the most time consuming of the three considerations, and with the amount of learning I need to prep for during a day, is the consideration that I often don’t do or do while we are reading the text.