Every year, my students groan at the start of the year when I tell them that, among the four quarterly books they will read for me, one of them must be non-fiction.
“Ugh, boring.” “Non-fiction is dumb.” “Who likes non-fiction?” These are some of the responses I’ve become accustomed to hearing.
And every year, many of those same students discover that non-fiction is not so bad. In fact, some then get upset when I say they can’t just read non-fiction. “But they’re so good!”
There are some things I make kids read. Every 7th grader reads The Outsiders. Every 8th grader reads the play version of The Diary of Anne Frank. There are certain things that everyone should be exposed to, including those classics. Most kids tell me they enjoy reading those pieces of literature.
Otherwise, for the most part, I let the kids choose what they want to read. I’ll ask what their favorite book that they’ve ever read is or what their favorite genre is, and that usually helps me make a recommendation. Many times, I get positive feedback on what I’ve suggested.
How do you create people who enjoy reading? You give choices. You open up the vast array of incredible writing that is out there and tell them to dive in. With an ocean of fantastic things to read, they’re bound to find a wave of something that will pique their interest.
I do require three different genres out of the four books for the year. But there are many books that will fit into multiple genres. I have a lot of multi-cultural books, and I’m trying to broaden the worldview of teenagers. All of those books also can be considered realistic fiction or mystery or historical fiction or even poetry. So it’s easy to keep allowing them to read what they like while also exposing them to another genre.
Do we read short stories that might not be at the top of everyone’s list? Of course we do. We’ll sometimes read together and work to understand what is going on. I also have kids read stories on the ReadWorks site every other week to practice their comprehension skills. There is a lot of grumbling about that, but I do it for a reason.
The MCA reading tests.
Yep, you guessed it. Here we are once again at the start of standardized testing season, and it’s time for my annual column on why this is a bad idea.
I read an article earlier this year from The Atlantic. Some researchers had looked into if reading comprehension improves when you let kids read what they want. To nobody’s surprise, it does! Allow kids to read about topics which interest them, and they will understand what they have read better. Who could have imagined? (There’s still not a sarcastic font, but imagine the last question being typed in that imaginary, and necessary, style.)
Way back when only 8th graders took standardized tests, we were allowed copies of previous stories. I still vividly remember one called “The Great Blue Heron.” It was about these magnificent birds in Minnesota and how much a part of nature they were.
And it was brutally boring.
A student asked me one time why there were no stories about NASCAR. He was a big fan. The explanation I was given from one of the high muckity-mucks at the state headquarters was that they didn’t want to have any interesting stories that might give certain kids an advantage if they liked that topic.
So they look for stories that aren’t about anything teenagers would care about.
Do you have to read boring things for your job? I do at times, but I’m also an adult who gets paid to do a job. If you’re a teenager and not getting anything for reading a story about something you don’t enjoy, how much are you going to stay focused?
I know we can’t have a ton of stories covering everyone’s interest, but we could have some choices. Does the state truly want to know how well kids read? Then they need to expand on what these stories are about and include stories that might actually be of interest to kids.
There must be stories about Fortnite or TikTok or YouTube or whatever else is foremost on their minds. Use those, and I guarantee scores will go up.
I wrote in this space a while back about how sometimes I give up on reading a book if it’s not grabbing my interest. I will do that because I love to read and there are a lot of good books that I want to get to, but I still want to read what is interesting to me. It’s no different with kids, and, unfortunately, many of them don’t love reading as much as I do.
Would more choices have changed the fact that one of my students finished 53 questions in about half an hour? Or the one that finished in around 15 minutes? Probably not, but it may have helped the kids that tried their hardest but just had a difficult time reading a story that they had zero interest in to begin with.
Is a true measure of reading ability accurate in that situation? Or would it be better to find stories that grab the attention of a teenager? I have three words to answer that question, and anybody who has been in my 7th grade class understands because they remember this, comprehended it, and can tell you all about it:
Stay gold, Ponyboy.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is tergiversate, which means to evade, as in, “As much as the student wanted to tergiversate the story about herons, they had to read it for the test.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!