Reading in 8th Grade and Beyond

From the desk of Ailce…

My youngest children are 5 year old twins on the verge of Kindergarten.  They naturally love books and without prompting will crawl into someone’s lap to hear a story or book about something they are interested in.  They ask questions about pictures, words, make predictions, infer and generally throw themselves into the text in an effortless way.  This makes exploring reading and writing very easy- curiosity and motivation are high.

My oldest child is on the verge of highschool.  As an 8th grader, she is currently reading mulitple texts for multiple reasons and also has her own personal list of books that she reads in addition to on-line reading of a variety of things.  Her motivation is very different than her emerging siblings in the world of reading.  My oldest has strategies in place to help herself and has reading knowledge that runs deep from years of practice.

One of the mistakes we make sometimes with middle school readers (and beyond) is that they don’t need our support with reading.  The opposite is true. The middle school-highschool reader still needs support but it looks different at these levels.

Myth #1: They are done.

Once students are independent readers, they like to think they are “done” with learning to read and can check it off the list.  As parents, we sometimes like to think this, too.  However, we know that when we put unfamiliar genres or topics requiring background knowledge, we can see these readers slip.  This is normal.  It happens to all of us from time to time. The key is to explicitly let these indepenent readers kjnow that this is going to happen and they can equip themselves with strategies to move themselves forward.

Myth #2: They don’t need to be strategic.

As mentioned above, the more complex the text (structure, vocabulary or content) the more readers will need to be metaccognitive and really consider how to make sense of the text.  It is not good enough to call every word in Macbeth and not understand the theme.  In the era of Common Core, the focus with these upper level readers is on deep understanding and critical thinking on the part of the reader.  Stephanie Harvey, Cris Tovani and Kelly Gallagher offer many resources for supporting comprehension with strategy use.  Some basic strategies that can be taught in the lower grades and used FOREVER include embracing confusion, utliziling the inner voice, and synthesizing information.

Myth #3: If they are good readers, they will understand all texts.

I recently have talked with teachers who are shocked at their “top” readers struggling with science texts, poetry and complex math problems.  Not because they aren’t “smart” but because they are having trouble understanding the text at hand.  Time spent with text is a huge contributing factor to reading success.  I am guilty of not reading poetry to my five year olds when we read at night.  I would also venture to say very few of us read scientific articles or word problems in our reading free time and discuss with our children in the way we do other texts.  So the reading gap has already started.  When we present these texts in the classrooms, we need to consider students have had much less experience working with these than they have chapter books and typical fiction.  In recent years, we are seeing an increase in informational print and Common Core is helping us all shift gears.  Until the time spent with text is equitable across genres, these students will need higher scaffolds when encountering difficult texts.  This includes our most struggling readers to our “top” performers.

Myth #4: They don’t need to talk to us about what they read.

This is the opposite of what is true.  Learning is social so the more our upper level readers talk about text, the more they will comprehend.  As a parent, take time to discuss the content of the science/history project.  Definitely take time to help unpack some word problems and notice when you have to reread or get confused.  If you are in the classroom, build in time to talk (partners, small groups, etc.) so the students can deepen their thinking about the topic as well as work out some of their confusion.

I challenge all of us to learn more about our upper level readers so we can help them develop into lifelong readers- of all texts!