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1. Maintain a relaxed classroom atmosphere—Having a relaxed working atmosphere is a prerequisite for production of any kind. We know through medical science that stress retards and, in some cases, completely blocks the learning process. Here are a few things that I have done to create a relaxed class:
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1. At the beginning of the school year, I have used a questionnaire to find out my students’ interests, their attitude to the subject and their attitude towards adults and peers.
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2. In addition, at the beginning of the school year, I make students aware of my expectations. Making them aware of my expectations minimizes fear and confusion.
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3. I constantly reward positive behavior and remember to comment favorably on personal appearance (A little praise yields great dividends).
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4. I try not to ‘put anyone on the spot’. This is easy to do when you keep in mind that there are different types of learners and different methods of producing the same results.
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2. Make time for SSR (Sustained Silent Reading)—The SSR method presumes that the more students read, the better readers they will become. In addition, if they can choose books, magazines, etc. that they are interested in, and if they are shown how to create time for reading, then they will read more. With the SSR method, you set aside a specific time for individualized silent reading. Have each child bring a magazine, newspaper or book that he is interested in so that he can read during the allotted time. You, as the teacher, should also read during this time to set the correct role model. In some schools, everyone from administrators to staff help, reads during this time. The SSR model has been accepted by many school systems across the USA.
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3. Have a LRR
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(Ludington Reading Room) or your own adaptation of this program. Basically the LRR is a partially privately funded reading program where a reading room filled with paperbacks is set aside for each school building. Each reading room contains three books per student and the usual library privileges are observed.
We have an interesting report from one of the first high schools to use this program, the Detroit Northwestern High School, which opened its LRR in 1965. In the first ten days of its operation, over 1,500 of the school’s 2,700 students visited the room; they checked out 1,850 books. Seven months later, 1,147 students visited the reading room in a similar time period and left with more than 1,000 books.
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A few weeks after the reading room was opened, seventeen yearold illiterate Joe approached his teacher and urgently asked to be the librarian for the program. Joe was given the position, and by memorizing the covers of
ALL
the paperbounds to replace them in their proper pockets in the wire racks, he learned to read.
Wherever this program has been used, teachers and reading coordinators have responded favorably. In New Jersey, more than fourfifths of the students in Grades 312 made use of the program. 40% junior high and 30% senior high students had read more since the paperback books had arrived. Watson and Thornton, in their study, found that nearly 60% of the total pupil population felt that their reading had substantially improved because of the presence of the paperback books provided by the LRR. Significantly a majority of the low readers felt that they were becoming better readers.
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A possible adaptation to this program could include setting up your own classroom library. You can get books and magazines from your own library at home or from teachers who may be willing to share theirs. You can also visit book fairs and second hand book stores where you can get books for as little as a dime. In addition, you can have simple fund raising activities. With funds obtained from these, you can write to RIF (Reading is Fundamental), a federally funded program, requesting additional money for this purpose. See footnote for address.
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They, in turn, will match the amount of money you’ve raised, with their funds. They will send you a catalogue of lowpriced reading material categorized by grades, levels, and topics. RIF will match as little as $100; so now you can have a minimum of $200 to buy books for your classroom library. Next, you need to decide on your manner of displaying your books. If you do not have much space, you can ask your industrial arts teacher to make you some wall racks and possibly some spinners for this. The rest is up to you. You can decide what borrowing privileges you will set up, what types of evaluation you’ll use for the program, and what methods of reinforcement you’ll use for the students. I will suggest a few reinforcement techniques a little further on.
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4. Make the school library inviting—Here are some ways of doing this:
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1. Instead of letting students see only the dull, uninviting Dewey decimal notations, arrange books just as a book store owner would, displaying the attractive covers of the books. To economize on space but with the books still invitingly displayed, use wall racks and freestanding spinners.
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2. Include many more paperbacks. Fader replies to the objection which may be raised that books would be torn more easily that “It is better for a book to be tattered from eager use than a brain be wasted.”
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3. If libraries are to be used frequently, a problem of space may arise. Therefore, a largersized classroom can also be set aside for display of paperback books, using revolving wire racks for paper bound books.
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4. Finally, to further encourage students to read, Fader says that one or two paperbacks should be given to each child at the beginning of the school year. Explain to the child that whenever he wants another book all he has to do is trade his for the one he wants. You should then schedule the child for the opportunity of borrowing.
According to Fader, this method has been highly successful at the Maxey and GarnetPatterson Schools. It seems then that in our school system where there is never enough money in the school budget that our own creative fund raising methods and RIF, alluded to earlier on, may just be the answers.
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5. Provide a reading list. This list should be drawn up from the student response to the interest questionnaire given out at the beginning of the year. Let students choose and read any books they wish to from the list. Hold the student accountable for his reading by having individual conferences. The following represents one example of a conference procedure as suggested by Evans.
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1. Two days prior to his conference, student puts his name on the schedule sheet. He also puts the name of the book he’s read.
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2. The teacher reads or skims the book prior to the conference.
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3. The student gives the teacher a file card with the book title, author and possibly brief summary at the time of the conference.
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4. The teacher keys opening question to find out the child’s general opinion of the book or compares the hero of this book to one from a previous book the child has read.
The teacher tries to determine how the student has approached and experienced a work of literature by asking questions to judge the student’s levels of comprehension: Did the student relate the book to his previous reading? Did he relate it to his own life? Did he understand the literary techniques of the author? Does this book represent progress in the student’s work as a reader? The answers to these questions will vary with the ability and needs of each student.
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According to the child’s response in the conference, the teacher can then suggest the next book for him within his reading interests and ability. Naturally, there should be more than one suggestion so the student can have a wide range of choice.
The conference can be graded by the teacher on any number of criteria—studentdetermined, teacherdetermined, or studentteacher determined.
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6. Provide a classroom environment that is conducive to reading—To do this, teachers can put up posters and sayings about reading, pictures of authors and of people reading, so that students can see the act of reading as something people like to do. In addition, using the interest questionnaire done at the beginning of the year, teachers can provide a variety of magazines (past issues) for browsing etc. In fact, for the past three years of teaching in New Haven, I did not think of providing magazines for extra reading when there was time remaining before the end of the period. Therefore, if I didn’t plan anything else, there would be talking. In my second year I decided to provide magazines (
Ebony
,
Jet
,
Sports Illustrated
and
Scholastic Scope
). These were selected based on the interest questionnaire. In addition, I gave extra credit points for reading when their regular assignment was finished. Students had to read the article and write the name of the magazine, the title of the article, issue date and number, and write a summary of it. This they kept in individual folders. At the end of the marking period, I would check them and give points accordingly. This method helped in many ways. It gave students more reading practice. It individualized work so that the quicker students had something meaningful to do when their assignments were completed. It gave students practice in summarizing articles. During that second year there were hardly any discipline problems. It was really smooth!
This past year, I provided the magazines but did not give extra credit for reading. The results weren’t as great. But discipline problems were also low and most of the kids really read. One thing that I observed though, is that even though the
Scope
magazines are interesting and easy to read, my kids (99 1/2% black) preferred to read the
Ebony
,
Jet
, and
Sports Illustrated
magazines even though they were past issues.
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7. Occasionally read aloud to students—This can be a useful technique in getting students interested in reading. Since the teacher generally knows what books are particularly good, reading aloud a few good stories and then suggesting others that are similar, can go a long way toward leading students to read. Karlin says that if a student realizes that his classmates are captured by the “magic” of a story, he may feel that he is really missing something and he will join the crowd. In addition, auctioning off books by reading the first few paragraphs in one book and offering it to the most interested student, repeating this procedure with the next, is an excellent way of using the competitive spirit in all of us to sell reading.
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8. Make your own readalong tapes—Because of increased technology, cassette tapes have become a very lowpriced commodity. Therefore, we as teachers could use these in our readalong programs without incurring much expense. With the help of some of your better students, tape excerpts from novels etc., then have low students read along with the tapes. This method works well with young and old alike and it has even been successful for those who have had no formal reading training. See footnote reference for examples.
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As an alternative to teachermade tapes, you can have students make their own tapes. To do this, the student would tape any experience that has made an impact on him. The teacher writes it out and gives it back to him as his reading assignment. The student then reads this along with the narration from the tape. This motivational technique is effective with any age group but does wonders with older students who are illiterate’
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9. Form a Reading Club—This would give interested students time to share their reading experiences with others. If the club is well-organized, the meetings will not be merely conversational sessions. Sometimes you can invite authors in or around the school area to attend these meetings. In addition, you can organize field trips to interesting places associated with authors or books.
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10. Use topical devices close to the students’ experiences ea. a “Hit Parade of Books,” “A Reading Diet,” or “Reading Rainbows.” The “Reading Rainbows” idea is taken from Ellen Lamer Thomas’ article “Reading Rainbows,” in
English Journal
(November 1961). In this technique, the teacher gives each child a variety of colored slips representing each type of book. As students read each type of book they place the matching colored slip in book pockets on the bulletin board. This technique encourages balance in the selection of books and helps to steer the student away from reading only one type of book.
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11. Use signs, forms, labels, rules for sports, advertisements etc. as high interest material for students reading at very low levels or for completely illiterate teenage readers.
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12. At some time replace customary texts and workbooks with newspapers and magazines (magazines that would especially appeal to the child’s culture). For example, for a short story unit, instead of using big hard cover text books featuring stories foreign to the child’s culture, use magazines. For black adolescents, you can teach the characteristics of a short story from
Ebony
or even
Jet
. Fader suggests that anthologies and hardbound texts should be discouraged because they are symbols of a world of scholastic failure to the unsuccessful student.
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13. Use the inductive rather than the deductive approach.
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14. Give awards—Always reinforce positive behavior. Therefore, make sure you have award certificates or some token or even extra credit points, for increased reading activity.
In his book on
Teaching Reading in High School
(p. 278), Karlin lists sixteen sources which provide booklists for normally progressing readers, some listing as many as 2,000 titles. Three sources I have found particularly useful are:
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Books for the Teenage Reader.
New York Public Library Annual. This source provides a descriptive guide to over 700 books designed for those who are just beginning to like reading, to the mature reader.
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Books for You.
National Council of Teachers of English, Champaign, Illinois, 1964. This provides over 2,000 titles in 45 different categories and subcategories.
Karlin also provides (p. 279) a similar list of sources which provide booklists for poor readers.
High Interest, Easy Reading,
prepared by the Committee on the High Interest—Easy Reading Book List for the National Council of Teachers of English, is a very valuable source for motivating those of our very reluctant readers.
In this the final part of my project, I will now provide an annotated bibliography of books and magazines that have worked well with my students, and books that I have used as reference material for this project.
