Happy book study day, friends! Today we are discussing chapters 2 and 3 in our book study of Disrupting Thinking.
Here’s what my notes looked like from these two chapters
I have to admit, I connected more to chapter 2 (The Responsive Reader) than chapter 3 (The Responsible Reader.) I do think it’s important to be both responsive AND responsible, but it is a bit overwhelming, right? I mean, it’s very hard to change some kids’ thinking about how to response to the text instead of just reading to answer questions. It’s a lot to think about how to get them to connect to the text and then challenge it to change their mind about something or defend their way of thinking about it. It’s important, yes, but I was just more motivated by chapter 2. What about you?
This book has really got me thinking about how to teach reading. I like to think I’ve always put importance on connecting to the text, but I do think in the past, I’ve focus a bit too much on just reading and answering questions about a text. I mean, my number one goal in teaching ELA is to make every one of my students a reader, but at the end of the day, we are also responsible for teaching them how to read for information and how to cite evidence properly when writing a constructed response. Sometimes I think I skip over the responding to the text to focus more on answering a question correctly. That pains me to say, but I want to reflect on this honestly. This is something I need to work on. Yes, there’s a balance, but I think we have to teach kids how to respond to the text and make connections. I loved the quote on p.28:
“If the reader isn’t responsive, if she doesn’t let the text awaken emotion or inspire thoughts, then she can barely be said to be reading at all.”
This made me think of when you DNF a book (did not finish.) When I’m not into a book, either because I don’t understand it or because I simply don’t enjoy the story, I DNF it. The text isn’t connecting to me emotionally or intellectually, so I don’t read it.
I think if we teach the kids how to respond to the text and how to connect to it and question it, the answering of the questions will become a second thought, which doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. If they are connecting to the text, they are understanding it and should be able to answer questions about it, even though that isn’t (and shouldn’t be!) the main objective of reading.
Okay, I want to hear YOUR thoughts! What stuck out to you in this chapter?
To see the other posts in the book study:
Chapter 2,3 (this post)
Chapter 4, Part I Thoughts
Part II, Chapter 5,6
Chapters 7,8,9, Thoughts on Part II
Part III, Chapters 10, 11
Chapters 12, 13
Chapters 14, 15, end of book
I agree that when you DNF a book, it's because you are not connecting in some way. I try to model A TON at the beginning of the year how to connect with just about anything, to help the students see that it does increase engagement and comprehension. Then the more they read, the more connections they can make! After a standardized test this spring, one of my students mentioned that the content was similar to something we had read during a guided reading group earlier in the year. They seemed to "get it" that the more we read, the more we can read!
When reading Chapter 3, I realized that I try to teach reading responsibly, but I'd like to do it with more real world texts. It's so important today to read responsibly, with all the fake news and click bait, therefore this is going to become a priority in my classroom. Students make a lot of inferences, based on their own experiences, that they sometimes don't think about what the author is really trying to say. I've found that more and more, I can look up anything online that agrees with my perspective. If I have a question or concern (particularly when looking up problems or concerns with my 1 year old), I can find the information I WANT to see- but it may be biased or not supported. Same goes for political articles. I'm hoping to model this more with historical information, so my political views don't overpower my lesson 😉
I loved these chapters. I really felt like the "reading instruction" tide is turning away from only finding answers in the texts and moving back towards allowing kids to actually think about what they're reading. It broke my heart to see the transition in thinking from the younger students to older students. Teachers did that. We made students not think about what they're reading. I'm so glad that there's a ton of research to back up self-selected reading.
As far as nonfiction texts, I used NewsELA this past year for our article of the week. The texts that students responded most strongly to were texts about current events. They were able to make those emotional connections. (And I liked NewsELA because the texts were very unbiased).
I also love what Nikoline said in the previous comment about how when we read more we're able to make more connections!
I find that my students respond better to nonfiction texts too. I'm not sure if the reason is they are struggling to make connections to characters in a literary text, and a nonfiction text presents facts.
As a reading specialist at the elementary level, I find I get stuck on the surface level too often- decoding, retelling, finding text evidence. By the time we make it through that the students have lost focus or the 30 minutes is up. Sometimes we do get into deeper discussions about the "Big Idea" and what the book taught them, but the conversations are so quick, I don't think kids have time to internalize the concept let alone carry it in their heart. By the next day we're moving on to the next book. I'm thinking now about how I will make this more of a priority, especially (but not solely) with my 3rd and 4th graders.
As I think back on this past year, I feel that I was eliciting more "responsive responses" from my higher level kids and more "responsible responses" from my lower level kids. That's going to change!
I also really like the graphics on the "Big 3 Questions" and "Is it Fake News?" Those will be very helpful to me and the students.
We use a program called Achieve3000 for our independent nonfiction text reading, but I can see myself asking students to complete "responsive" responses as well now.
The ideas in chapter 2 about the responsive reader stuck with me more than the ideas presented about responsible readers in chapter 3. I feel like my school and district has done a pretty good job of starting to hold students responsible for their thinking. There are discussions about reliable sources and click bait. However, I am not sure that we spend a lot of time discussing the flexibility that readers must have when defending their thinking or examining why their thinking has changed with evidence.
The idea that we are connecting and interacting with not only the text and ourself, but also the author, the characters, and other readers stood out to me. My students discuss texts, but we don't discuss to the depth and complexity of broadening out insights.
Maybe it's because I recently finished chapter 3 (I'm just a bit behind this week), but I connected to the responsible reader. So often my middle school students let their personal bias and opinion hold strong-even when presented with conflicting evidence. The text should be used to confirm or deny or current knowledge. I really liked that! The text isn't out to get you, but to get you to think. Being responsible and responsive readers are intertwined.