Blog Post 2: Building Effective Long-Term Reading Habits

 Hello all!

            I hope everyone is enjoying the slow transition to fall! I know I have been enjoying the cooler temperatures and the beginning of fall activities!

 

How will I design instruction that helps students develop habits that enhance their reading lives?

 

My Experiences

            When I think back to the reading habits I developed in elementary and middle school, I am shocked at how often I read and how quickly I tore through library books. I remember spending almost all of my free time as a child and preteen reading books I had chosen for myself—not to use for a class project or even a grade, just to read for fun. I know this was the case for many of my peers too. I remember almost my entire fifth grade class getting excited every Thursday when it was our class’s turn to go to the library and pick out as many new books as we wanted for the upcoming week. I vividly remember discussing the events unfolding in the newest Magic Treehouse books with several of my classmates and sharing our recommendations of new novels or authors we discovered and loved.

            Despite this early love for and devotion to reading, however, my time spent reading for fun sharply dropped off in high school. The same was true for my peers—there was no more discussing our recent reads or anticipating new releases from favorite authors. Instead, it became the norm for my peers not to read at all. Kids weren’t reading the texts assigned in class, let alone reading books for fun. Looking back now as a teaching intern and future English teacher, these memories discourage me and motivate me to look for ways to keep that love for reading burning in my students even as they move through high school and into adulthood.

 

Designing Instruction to Promote Student Reading Habits

            As I consider how I can design instruction that helps students develop habits that enhance their reading lives, I think about why I myself stopped reading so much in high school. I think a lot of it had to do with my busy schedule and with the texts that were being assigned in my classes. In middle school, I had less homework and ample time to read as much as I wanted when I got home from school each day. However, when I entered high school, I started running cross country, working at a local restaurant, and taking on a more challenging homework load that made it challenging to find free time to dedicate to reading. I also found myself losing interest in reading the texts being assigned in my classes. Many of them were classics, and while I appreciate most of them now, I could not see how they related to me and how I could be expected to immerse myself in them when they had nothing to do with me or with anything I could even remotely relate to.

            I think that many students feel this way. They become busy as they enter high school and feel that they no longer have time to read, and they get put off of reading when the only things they do read are texts they are being made to read that they aren’t at all interested in. In my curriculum design, I want to combat these issues and show students that they can realistically reintroduce reading into their daily lives and that they can read books that they can relate to and identify with. According to Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classroom, author Randy Bomer argues that we as teachers should be aiming to teach “beyond the forms of literacy demanded by any schooling” and to instead teach in ways that are “aimed directly at literate lives,” which includes teaching students about how to reasonably include reading in their daily lives in ways that are practical and enjoyable for them (51).

            I agree with Bomer’s argument that we should be working toward pushing students to be lifelong readers and learners rather than just students who know how to read academically. Reading is not only about academics, but also a healthy, enjoyable, fun, stress-relieving activity that we want to be present in the lives of our students beyond school. I do not want to teach students only how to read as it pertains to school, but instead how it relates to them and how they can build a reading life for themselves (Bomer 52).

            In order to design a curriculum that encourages my students to build habits that enhance their reading lives, I will allow my students to read in ways that are comfortable and productive for them. I will also help them investigate what habits might work best for them if they do not know where to start. For example, I can discuss with them where they might like to read, whether it be in a lawn chair in their backyard, at the library, or in a busy coffee shop. I can also help them find types of books that they enjoy and help give them recommendations as I become familiar with their likes and dislikes with reading. I can also model some of my own reading habits and show or tell students how I fit reading for fun into my own personal life and schedule. Overall, I think that helping students find ways to read that fit with their preferences and schedules shows them that reading can be a beneficial and enjoyable part of their life. Supporting students in discovering and forming new reading habits and encouraging them to read books that they want to read will help show students the joys of reading outside of school and in their own personal lives.

 

References:

Bomer, R. (2011). Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.