4 Reasons All Teachers Are Reading Teachers
August 28, 2024
We learn to read. And we read to learn. Right from the vey start. And for the rest of our lives. Being able to read well opens worlds of learning and presents boundless possibilities at school and beyond. From the time we first learn to read, reading becomes essential to our day. We read texts, articles, instructions, articles, poetry, novels that enrich our understanding of ourselves and others. Since reading is so critical to success in school and in life, the job of teaching students to read belongs to all of us.
Reading is integral to all subjects. Students read in every class across the day. They read picture books, novels, poetry, and expository texts during the English Language Arts block. They read speeches, letters, articles, and historical texts in social studies class. In science, students read textbooks, graphs, lab directions, and charts. In math, especially in K–8, students read hundreds of word problems throughout any given year. And the type of reading and the strategies needed to fully explore texts in each subject differs, so students need reading instruction across the day to fully appreciate and understand what they are reading from class to class to class.
Students need to be exposed to different types of texts, genres, and topics. Throughout the course of any school year (and for the rest of their lives), students will encounter lots of different reading material – from novels to speeches, from plays to journal articles, from historical letters to picture books, from texts to science textbooks. In ELA classes, students might learn how read a poem and extract meaning, how to approach a script and understand both the plot and the stage directions, how to read texts where they make sense from both pictures and words. In social studies classes, students need to be taught how to look for the main points of a short article, how to derive historical facts from letters or speeches, and how to set an article in historical context. In science class, students will encounter dense page spreads with different text features – headers and sub headers, call-out boxes and sidebars, and graphics intermingled with the through text. They must be taught how to approach the information on the page – what do they read first, how to extract the most important information, where to look for additional clarification. Reading in each class involves both unique and transferable strategies that help kids deeply comprehend the text.
Students need more practice to become proficient readers. Reading requires that students master a complex array of interconnected skills from phonics to the theory of language, from vocabulary strategies to print concepts, from verbal reasoning to cognitive flexibility, from self-motivation to fluency, and more. Deeply learning these skills requires time and lots of practice, more time and practice than can be fit into the ELA block. Providing students with reading instruction throughout the day gives them the opportunity to deeply process skills and apply strategies with a variety of texts and subjects, just like they will encounter beyond their school years.
Reading expands students’ cultural and social contexts. Reading doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Each student brings their life experiences, their social perspectives, and their cultural background to everything they read. For instance, some cultures have a rich oral tradition that informs how students from these cultures approach knowledge building. All students should see themselves represented on the page and be given an opportunity to read texts that present a rich diversity of worldviews, cultures, and opinions. In this way, students learn that everyone brings value to the classroom and that there is a vast world of knowledge for them to explore.
To learn more about how to effectively work literacy and knowledge-building into every lesson, regardless of subject, check out my new book Teaching Reading Across the Day.