Engaged Reading:
Turning Reading into
An Active Experience

You also can engage students by:

Knowing/respecting who they are. When teachers lose sight of individuals and their potential, engagement suffers. Understanding different learning styles, interests, peer interaction, and motivation can move students from passivity to an active, stimulating approach. Give students active roles in setting expectations and purposes to help them connect to text.

Integrating real world experiences into learning. One study Dr. Guthrie conducted -- Does Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction Increase Strategy Use and Conceptual Learning From Text -- found "that reading instruction, when embedded within a hands-on science curriculum, increased reading comprehension, strategy use, and problem solving in third and fifth graders."

• Use realia -- tangible, three-dimensional objects from the real world. One of the most powerful learning experiences from my own college years came when a teacher stopped lecturing and passed around an ancient Etruscan mirror.
• Investigate historical portfolios or exploration boxes. The most popular for learners from upper elementary to high school are called Jackdaws. These packets cover social studies and literature study topics from Charles Dickens to the Boston Tea Party. Students explore a given topic through copies of authentic documents, maps and broadsheets, activity worksheets, and writing assignments, debate and research ideas.

Mesmerizing them daily with a story. Use picture books, a guest speaker, and print news or Internet articles to spark learning. A short read-aloud can invite children to examine print, discuss the words and ideas in a book, and relate them to the world beyond. Marilyn Jager Adams says, "At its best, sharing books provides a way of delighting children both in texts and in their own capacity to explore and learn from them."

Being an engaged teacher. If teachers are engaged, students will mirror that enthusiasm. Use such think-aloud strategies as prediction and one called "stop, ask, fix" as Jeffrey Wilhelm suggests in Improving Comprehension with Think Aloud Strategies. Don't think computers are a substitute. Even Phil Pflaum, writing for an education technology magazine, T.H.E. Journal, emphasizes an equation of "Kid + Computer + An Engaged Teacher = Learning. In other words, the teacher, not the computer, is key."

FROM THE REAL CLASSROOM

Lucy Calkins is the perfect model for teaching engaged reading. She suggests making a dramatic break from simple knowledge acquisition, and taking children to higher thinking levels (analysis and evaluation) -- and she tells us just how to do it.

Can't we simply say, "Can we talk about the reactions the children in this book had to the main character?" and then back out of the conversation -- leaving space for students to comment and elaborate on one another's comments -- instead of acting as masters of ceremonies?

Let students become a stronger part of conversation. At first, simply encourage them to talk to anyone sitting nearby. After a few weeks, assign them to sit beside the same read-aloud partner each day. Long-term read-aloud partnerships allow children to say things like, "You know how yesterday you said such and such? Well, it's happening still," or, "It's the same as before!"

Before long, you'll be able to pause at a key section of the text and look at the students, who'll note the signal and get knee-to-knee with partners. The room will erupt in conversation. After a few minutes, you'll simply resume reading aloud or reading in pairs as voices subside."

That is engaging children in reading at its best.

About the Author Known as the "Literacy Ambassador," Cathy Puett Miller uses her library science degree from Florida State University as the foundation of her work. With more than ten years experience as an independent literacy consultant working with teachers, parents, librarians, and non-profit family-friendly organizations, she has conducted research initiatives and best practice studies in the areas of beginning reading instruction, emergent literacy and volunteer tutoring. She currently is listed on the U.S. Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse Registry of Outcome Evaluators. Cathy's freelance writing appears in such print publications as Atlanta Our Kids, Omaha Family, and Georgia Journal of Reading, and online at Literacy Connections, Parenthood.com, Education World, Family Network, the Reading Tub, The National Education Association, and BabyZone. She also reviews children's books at Children's Literature Comprehensive Database. Her signature is her passion for connecting children and families to positive, powerful experiences with reading; she believes there is a book for every child. Cathy lives with her husband, Chuck, eighteen-year-old son, Charlie, and lots of friendly, ferociously read books in Huntsville, Alabama. Visit Cathy's Web site at The Literacy Ambassador.

Article by Cathy Puett Miller
Education World®
Copyright © 2006 Education World

03/03/2006
Updated 08/02/2008