Raising Active Readers

Parents often ask me how to get their student reading at a deeper level. And honestly—there isn’t a quick fix. There is no magic way to get your child from Dick and Jane to Pride and Prejudice. And if she is reading Jane Austin, how can you be sure that she is understanding all that she reads?

As in writing, the development of reading comprehension skills is a process. But it is a process that can start even before your child can read or write his own name! It is a process that is never too soon to begin.

First, it is important to realize that reading comprehension isn’t just knowing which character said something in a conversation or the order of the plot points. Comprehension is understanding the broader context of the time period through the language the writer uses as well as identifying the motivations and complexities of each person in the story.

A student with strong comprehension skills should be able to make reasonable inferences about what a character “might” do in a given situation or draw conclusions about what the author is trying to communicate through these characters.

To do this, it is helpful to strengthen vocabulary. Having a thorough knowledge of the words an author uses is half the battle in comprehension improvement.

Encourage your student to jot down words she doesn’t know in each chapter. Make this part of the process. Then use these words as a vocabulary list and study them...of course if you’ve been following my newsletters for any amount of time, you know that I’m a fan of family wide vocabulary learning!

Next, begin when your child is very young and ask open ended questions about a text. An open ended question cannot be answered with a simple yes or no.  

“Why do you think Winne the Pooh is so patient with Rabbit all the time?”    

And what happens if you disagree with your student’s answer? Super! This is a chance to have him defend his reasoning...ask him to use examples from the book to support his thoughts. This is the beginning of a literature paper. And all of this can begin in preschool with Winnie the Pooh!

Start these types of discussions early in your reading-together days as it will train your child to begin active thinking while he reads. This is what teachers truly mean when they tell students to “active read.” But this is a skill that can’t just be turned on one day in 5th grade. It needs to be modeled and cultivated one book at a time.

As your child grows and matures into higher level books, enjoy reading the same literature and create your own family book club discussions. You might be surprised to find that he has more complex insights than you give him credit for.

One on One Instruction is Best!

Writing instruction has been in the news a lot in recent years. Why are our students falling short in the realm of written communication? How do we best teach them these skills?

Teachers and experts banter back and forth with ideas and “fancy” curriculums, but as it turns out (and as we at Online Scribblers knew all along) “fancy” isn’t the answer.

Recently, Nell Scharff Panero, a veteran English teacher and PhD in education leadership, set out to find the best ways to improve student writing outcomes in the classroom. What she learned is maybe not what most schools want to hear—but it IS what works.

What she found is that 75% of students in grades 8 to 12 in the US are below grade level when it comes to written skills. Even more shocking is that teachers continue to move on to teach grade level writing skills each year regardless of where students are on the spectrum of skill.

But you can’t build upon skills that aren’t there. Presenting 9th grade skills to a student who has mastered only 5th grade skills  is ludicrous. It would be akin to teaching calculus to students who have not even had basic algebra. Yet, this is what is happening in classrooms across America.

Why?

There are several reasons.

First, students are not tested annually as they are in reading and math, so we don’t have a “writing level” established for them.

Second, even when students are recognized as lacking in writing skill, fixing the problem takes time and manpower.

You see, it isn’t a matter of simply filling the gaps and bringing kids up to speed with an extra lesson or two. To really improve an individual student’s writing skill, it takes precious time. A teacher must look at a sample of work, assess the actual breakdown in understanding, and remediate to that exact level and situation.

Individually.

For every, single student.

While one student may need to remediate all the way back to basic sentence writing, another may need paragraph basic remediation. There is no one size fits all. And, of course, once the remediation is made, there must be continued, frequent practice to retain and build true skill.

There is no quick fix.

There is simply no substitute for one on one instruction for each student at his or her own precise level. Writing education should begin early and occur often for best results. But it is never too late to begin the process.

There is no shame in remediating students to simpler skills and solidifying the experience. The only shame exists in pretending that there is not a national crisis in student communication and refusing to address it with the resources it requires.

More about Nell Scharff Panero’s study can be found in the article The Writing Revolution in The Atlantic.