How v. Why: A Question of Audience

In my classroom, the most motivating factor for students to gain information has been, hands down, audience. If students are working towards a project that will be presented for an audience they care about, it gives them a purpose beyond performing a task for my eyes alone. In addition, the traditional audience of one does not reflect our digital 21st century. Our students can and should publish to a wider audience. This can be done through individual and class blogs, collaborations via google docs, you tube videos, skype calls with other classrooms, voicethread essays, podcasts, letters to the editor, comments on news articles, book review sites, publishing a class book, online contests - the list is endless.

To be honest though, I find that I can think of many ways to answer ‘how can students apply information?’, but always return to ‘why should they?’ If the purpose is merely to ‘gain information’ then students could just as easily read summaries of our books instead of the books themselves - in this case, information becomes a commodity to ingest and produce, no matter the audience. A paper summary is a Twitter summary is a blog summary. However, if the teacher’s purpose is to prioritize critical thinking, facilitate connections across texts and ideas, and solve problems through collaboration, then teachers need to construct the form of their curriculum to be a catalyst for these goals. The audience then becomes a meaningful context for information, where ‘how can’ is enabled by the teacher, but ‘why’ is motivated by the student.

The Reading 'Workout'

I consider myself a struggling exerciser. It’s hard to get myself going, I want to see immediate results, I feel better after but not enough to maintain a routine, and sometimes I simply don’t know what I’m doing wrong. It’s not even that I don’t like to exercise, I just have so many excuses for why I don’t. In these ways, I feel the passive frustration of my ‘non’-readers. How can I as a teacher, knowing the multitude of benefits for reading, also cultivate the more sophisticated pleasure that comes from discipline that will help my students become lifelong readers?

By the time many of my students reach 10th and 12th grade, they have established non-reading patterns that I have to work to re-negotiate. Especially with my struggling students, the attitude ‘I don’t like to read’ becomes ‘I’ll just go on Sparknotes’ or simply ‘I don’t read.’ My goal becomes to embed motivation in what they do with the reading, with the intention that ultimately my “instruction builds the skill and desire to read increasingly complex materials” (Ivey & Fisher, 2006). For me, the ELA classroom provides a theoretical space for lifelong literacy but needs attentive construction to effectively build a culture of reading within and beyond its walls.

In the classroom, I have the opportunity to construct reading routines, especially ones focusing on the persistence, self-reflection, and pleasure in reading necessary for independently motivated readers. This year, my ‘aha!’ moment came when reading Kelly Gallagher's text ‘Deeper Reading’ as he contrasts how much scaffolding and in-class support middle and high school ELA teachers devote to writing instruction, with the homework ‘to read.’ Gallagher presents different ways to chart understanding, self-monitor comprehension, and then ‘second draft’ read to not only understand but to revel in thinking more deeply. This approach assembles a multi-layered reading process (paralleling the writing process - it seems so obvious now!), and I’m better able to work with my students to engage, encourage, and maintain their reading and critical thinking habits. And, if all goes well, everything culminates in the satisfaction we’ve all felt after a good reading workout.