Reading Choice

In Friday’s edition of the Star Tribune, there was an article entitled “For A in empathy, read Chekhov.”  I mention this because we’re at the point in the school year where I’m starting to look more closely at what my students are selecting for their independent reading, and like usual, I’m a bit nervous.  It isn’t that my students aren’t reading during their independent choice time – they are.  The graphic novels in particular are flying off my shelves, and students are taking home those books all the time from my classroom library.  And I’m happy about that – I really am.  But in terms of difficulty or complexity, few students are choosing chapter books that are what I think of as fourth grade level chapter books.  Some are happy reading Magic Treehouse or Horrible Harry, but nobody is picking up Bud, Not Buddy or other more “classic” children’s books.  I’m not even sure if “classic” is the right word, since adult classics all seem to be hundreds of years old and are often difficult to get through, but I’m talking about more literary books that don’t have cartoony characters on the cover. I know many of those are really higher grade books, but the Star Trib article made me think about getting my students ready for those more challenging books.  Even reading books with more text and fewer pictures is daunting for some of my more struggling readers, and their guided reading books usually have quite a few picture supports. 

But at some point, students need to be preparing for more text and fewer pictures, especially in fiction. I hesitate to even bring up testing, but the state tests have very few pictures unless it’s a nonfiction passage that includes a graph.  Students have groaned when they see a whole page of text, so a whole chapter book that has page after page of text with no pictures isn’t at all appealing to them. I wrestle with how much choice I need to give, when I know that they need to build up reading stamina, and that reading longer books will also challenge their vocabularies and broaden their reading experiences.

 It’s at this point in the year where I break out some chapter books in a variety of levels, and give some quick book talks.  I then ask students to choose their top three, and I sort through and assign them a book to read.  I’ve had success with this because there is some choice involved, although I will put students in books that best fit their reading level rather than let them struggle (if their first choice is a book I know will be too much for them).  I then require the students to read a third of the book each week, and I put their section pages up on the board so they know how many pages they need to read each week.  I do have them fill out a short response sheet that asks about setting, characters, problem, solution, etc… but it doesn’t take too long to complete.  I try to meet with all the kids reading that book each week, so I can assess whether or not they’re understanding, but it isn’t like a full-fledged lit circle (although it certainly could evolve that way).  For some students who truly have a hard time choosing a book, having an assigned book helps them out, and for some students, this is the only way they will finish a book.  I have rarely had a student tell me they didn’t like the book they picked, but when it happens, I have always let those students read something else.

My selections are what I consider to be good children’s literature, and it makes me wonder if the aforementioned study that showed that reading literary fiction instead of popular fiction builds empathy also applies to children’s lit. At the very least, it gives kids exposure to writing styles they may not be getting with some of the more popular but casual styles of children’s books. And I’m all for reading those – I myself read a wide variety of material, some more high-brow than others. All of it helps our kids as readers.  Still, I want my students to have exposure to books they might not pick up unless their teacher assigns them; much of the time, they really like what they read, so I know it wasn’t a tortuous experiment.  How much choice do you give your students in selecting what they read independently?

Here's a link to the Star Tribune article: www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/226396821.html