Delight-filled Reading Yields Stronger Readers
“What gets measured gets taught. What gets taught gets better!” ... say educators who emotionally sag each year when reviewing the previous year’s disappointing “reading test” scores.?
For decades, literacy instruction changes have been cued by NAEP* test results. However, none of that seems to have improved subsequent test scores or enhanced children's engaged reading of books. Note: These tests are designed to gather data for PREDICTING relative reading ability, not to guide instruction. That is important.?
Notably, kids’ reading proficiency is assessed on yearly exams by requiring them to: read short passages in which they have scant interest, answer multiple-choice questions that children would never ASK, HURRY! while being watched, while sitting in uncomfortable chairs.?
That is NOT assessing meaningful reading! This is just used to predict it.?
Now, 29 percent of young readers are identified as proficient by this assessment method.** So, how did the 29-percenters ever learn to read with instruction guided by such assessments? ...or did they? Of those proficient readers, what percent choose to engage in daily delightful reading on their own? That is a critical question.?
Let us consider what we know about those avid and capable readers. They...?
It is simple: Truly proficient readers get that way by reading pleasureful books and sharing the experience with valued others. Children who read comfortably do so seeking the same kind of emotional state associated with a relaxing hobby. They do not bother with improving the mechanics of reading or working on perfecting specific reading skills. Primarily they embrace daily reading for enjoyment and edification.??
Self-Selected Reading IS its own reward.??
Doing something that is fun always leads to doing it better. It follows that focusing upon maximizing reading delights predictably enhances the number and quality of literacy engagements. That leads to improved reading. ?
Question: If establishing delight in reading books were the central focus of reading instruction, how might educators and parents then measure it? ?
Answer: Watch each child. Observe / Ask: Are they pleased with their book choices, and do they have questions???
Schools that try this might discover the value of measuring children's emotional drive to read (and write). Print literacy is for seeking human connection via reading and writing. If we teach children those, based upon the individual’s pleasure from that literacy, predictably we could see every child enjoyably moving closer to “proficient,” despite, not because of, those standardized assessments.?
* National Assessment of Educational Progress (in the USA)?
?
?
#NCTE?
#TESOL?
Distinguished Professor Emerita at University of California, Santa Barbara University of California, Santa Barbara
1 年Thank you Mark. This is very true. The question of choosing what you want to read was what I did when I was reading specialist in California after I returned to the classroom. My 6th grade student grew one year, six months in a six months for those choosing their own books. I contrasted that with students who chose to do structured reading of cards with paragraphs with questions after each, which was a program we had available, and those who stayed in the basal of leaders. Those who stayed in the basal readers, who stayed at the same level. It is for three options available in my school to support students learning to read better. Joanne Golden in her book on Narrative Stmbol in Childhood Literature reports that students told her to let them read, and they’ll answer the questions later.. There is an article on the PISA assessment of international studies iIN which the French government funded assessment of the predictive validity of the test? This is in the Review of Research in Education 2006 or 2008 by Jean Yves Rochex. This study also created groups that represented diverse groups and traced different test taking practices with only one success . Check it out.