What I've Noticed

This is my second year teaching Literacy Seminar, a high school class for struggling readers.  Last year, I was new to high school and feeling rather unsteady in this new role.  I also got my position in August (after setting up my classroom at my old building) just before school began.  While I was thrilled with the new position in a brand new building, I began in a whirlwind, grateful for the help of my colleagues and their diligent lesson planning.  I scooped up all their ideas and walked into class.  At the end of first semester, however, my test scores were awful.  My students really had not grown at all.  Was I really better at teaching middle school?  Was I just better at teaching a more affluent population?  Or was I doing the wrong things in my classroom?

I made a decision right then to assume the best:  I wasn't teaching the way I knew was best.  I needed to do what I knew about best practice in reading instruction.  I stopped doing "high school" stuff (whole class books and discussions) and returned to what I had done for years in middle school:  self-selected independent reading as the heart of my instruction.  I supplemented this with short-shared texts, mostly nonfiction articles.  Our growth at the end of the semester was much better; well, it was forward growth, anyway.

This year, I started the year off how I ended last year:  self-selected texts, short-shared text, lots of strategy instruction.  Growth at winter break was strong.  Then I did what we typically did in middle school - we moved on to more small groups and whole class instruction.  Scores now?  Not great.  What happened?

My theory is that my high school struggling readers need nowhere to hide.  They must be engaged in activities that offer no hope of riding on anyone's coat tails.  With small groups, there is room to hide behind others' thoughts, summaries, and "help."  With whole group texts, there's a whole class to hide behind.  And these kids have hiding strategies galore.  They are WAY more savvy than my middle school kids ever thought to be.  The end result?  They didn't really read.  Or they read just enough to piece together with others' reading just enough, that they could get by.

It's only when I require independent reading AND conference with kids that they must actually read.  Each student must do the reading, must talk with me, must think and write his/her own ideas.  In the actual pages of a self-selected book, kids are reading, constructing meaning, questioning and thinking.  In the conference with me, they must talk about their books, and I can see immediately what they understand, what they are struggling with, and where to nudge them forward.

That is where significant growth happens.  We build confidence, stamina and fluency by reading in our comfort zone.  We also face the fact that our hiding places have been removed.  Out in the light of actual reading, growth has a chance.