These Kids Just Won't Read

I can remember reading entire novels to my class—chapter one to final page, every word read aloud by the students or me.  Picture, if you will, the wonderful variety of ways one can slump in a chair.  Heads lolling back; elbows sliding off of armrests jerking the student awake; cheek resting on arm, resting on desk, with the book propped open and the eyes maybe opened maybe closed; legs splayed out across the aisle with body slumped down so low the head can rest on the chair back, book in lap, both fists dug into both cheeks keeping head solidly in place.  Oh, I could just go on and on, but I don’t need to, you’ve been in a classroom, you’ve seen it.  In fact, you’ve no doubt done it.  So, just picture it and run your eyes around that classroom.  Are we having fun yet?

             And there is me, probably really into the book because most of the time I actually like the literature I assign.  Every five to ten lines I’m interrupting, to ask a question, usually one designed just to see if anyone besides me knows what’s going on.

             “Isn’t that funny?”

             “Huh?”

             “Well, don’t you get it?  Mr. Avery is urinating off the porch?”

             “Huh?”

             “And Jem and Dill are trying to see who can pee the furthest, but Scout feels left out because she is ‘untalented in that area.’”

             “Huh?”

             “Oh, go back to sleep!”

             I shudder to think about it now.  What the heck did I think I was teaching them?  Well, now, to be honest, one time a senior came to me and said, “You know, that’s the first book I’ve ever read all the way through.”  So, that was something.  And I’m a pretty good reader, so there were different voices for different characters and lots of expression. 

             “Ain’t ya gonna tell about da Rabbits, George?”  I’d drawl out in a deep, slow-witted, loose-mouthed voice.  And maybe a few realized I was modeling good reading.

             But really, weeks and weeks would go by with very little time for discussion or guided analysis, or understanding of how one piece of literature fit with others and with the times in which it was written. 

             I don’t know exactly when it happened (probably on a day when I looked up from the page to realize I was the only one awake) but, one day I decided I was never going to read to them again unless I had a very specific purpose.  Whatever day that was, it was certainly liberating, but it left one tiny, teeny, itsy, bitsy problem—I would have to find a way to get them to read on their own.

             Now, maybe other people have students who can’t wait to get at the books they assign, finishing them the first night because, “Well, it was just so good I couldn’t put it down.”  I’ve never met those kids.  I’ve met one or two of their cousins, who would read because reading was assigned, but actually, not too many of those either.  In fact, when I was in school, a night when the only homework I had was pages to read, was a night without homework.  The students I have taught would fully endorse that attitude.

             I started out my new approach by using a recipe of reason, spiced with guilt.  “The work I have planned for tomorrow absolutely depends on you reading this chapter.  There will be no way for you to participate if you haven’t done so, therefore making tomorrow a complete waste of your time.  And besides, I have worked hard on the lesson and you’ll really be letting me down if you come in unprepared.”  They really let me down.

             Next, I went to the old reliable stand-by—guided reading questions.  “1. How does Bigger’s desperate run from the police relate to his existence as a whole?  2. From what do you think he is really running?”  On and on like that.  I can’t bear to repeat them.  In any case, those who did the homework did only what was necessary to come up with an answer to the question.  And since the questions were disconnected, they often still had no idea what really happened in the chapter.

             Time to get a little creative.  Have them make up questions.  Ten questions from each chapter with the answers.  “These very same questions will be used on your test at the end of the week, so don’t ask something you can’t answer.”  This had potential, if I had bothered to teach them about how to ask questions, and the differences between different kinds.  After a while I got tired of, “What is the reason why Bigger did that?” or “Who is Jan?”

             Then, in desperation at attempting to light yet another discussion unfueled by any knowledge of the text, I slammed the book on my desk and said, “Okay, that’s it!  From now on we start every class with a quiz on what you were assigned to read the night before.  Twenty points each, five quizzes equal a test mark.” 

             What!  Was I out of my mind?  Thirty to thirty-four kids in a class, five classes, five questions per quiz—that’s a minimum of 750 answers to be checked every day!  Suicidal! I pursued this mad policy for exactly one day.

             And then, finally, the great god of education took pity on me and sent me inspiration.  Here was a way to teach them how to ask questions, get them to read the pages, help them learn to think like a teacher (i.e. a mature reader), reduce my workload, and maybe even have a little fun in the process.

              “Okay, tomorrow we’re going to handle this a little differently.  I am going to read the next ten pages tonight and I am going to make up 5 questions about things that I consider to be important to know from the chapter.  They are going to be strictly factual, that is, you’ll be able to put your finger on the answer stated clearly in the story.  What words do we usually use to begin factual questions?”

             “Whowhatwhenwherewhy and how.”  Several voices call out in bored unison.

             “’Why’ usually gets you factual answers?”

             “No, not ‘why’,” someone says.

             “Ah, good.  See, two things happened there.  You stopped to think, which is always a good thing to do in a classroom, and you read my thinking.  You knew I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want you to change your answer.  In other words, you thought like me.  That’s good because for your homework tonight your assignment is to read my mind.

             “To do so, first you are going to read the same 10 pages I do, and then you are going to write at least 5 factual questions about important facts from the chapter.  If any two of your questions match two of mine, you don’t have to take the quiz, you get twenty free points, and while everybody else slaves away at the quiz, you can sit back, relax and grin at the backs of their heads.  Now, I said, at least five questions, but you can write as many as you want.  Try to think about what things might be important.  I’m not going to ask, ‘What was the third word on page 62?’  Also, be sensible, don’t ask, ‘What color was Jane’s pink nail polish?’ Duh!

             “Don’t waste your time on ‘why’ questions, there won’t be any.  ‘How come’ and ‘for what reason’ are ‘why’ questions too, so don’t bother with them.  And if anybody asks, ‘what is the reason why…’ I swear, I will rent a truck and run them over with it.  ‘Reason’ means ‘why’ and ‘why’ means ‘reason’ so send this phrase back to the Department of Redundancy Department and keep it out of my classroom.” (Corny, I know, but kids love corny so long as they love you.)

            

             Good ideas have two possibilities in the classroom—fly or die.  As soon as they entered the next day, I asked them for their five questions, circling slowly through the room to pick them up, allowing the last kids a few minutes to write down one or two more.  “Now, take five minutes to look over the pages, while I check your questions against mine…. Julese, you don’t have to take the quiz…”

             “Yessss.”

             “David, you’re out, too.  Tough luck, Akbar.  Robert, you have twenty questions here…” 

             “You said we could…”

             “I know, unfortunately, only one matches mine.  As you take the quiz see if you can tell why….” 

             And so on down the line.  In the end, four students were excused.   After I spent some time on a review of what constitutes “important information,” the next day eight people were excused.  By the fifth day we were down to only one to three people per class taking the quiz.  Kids were regularly writing ten to fifteen questions and were reading the text thoroughly.  They would rush into class before the bell to express indignation about something dumb the protagonist had done, often anticipating the day’s lesson but sometimes sending us in a gloriously different direction.

             As time went on and there were occasional days when no one had to take the quiz, I added another wrinkle.  I would have them open to the chapter under review, put their thumb in the book and close it, then I would read one of my questions and the first person to find the sentence that answered it, would get two extra points.  Their skim/scan abilities improved dramatically.  They began to pay attention to where things happened.  Some got so good at it I had to limit them to answering no more than two questions.

             I suppose, over the years I did become somewhat bored with having to begin nearly every period that involved a shared text, in the same way.  And, after we had done it with one or two texts, I would try to wean them away from it.  Still, it was immensely popular with the kids.  They wanted that push, and the hint of competition, and the improvement in their grades that came from getting perfect quiz marks without taking the quiz. 

             In addition to the benefits of having more class time to look at author’s craft issues (moving them from appreciators of a story, to appreciators of how the story was created), there was the bonus of ever greater understanding of the varieties and purposes of questions.

             We discovered that ‘why’ questions could bring factual answers after all—“Why, according to Holden…?” would bring us Holden’s exact words.  We learned that ‘how’ questions, could require deep analysis of a situation—“How well does Holden cope with changes in his life?”  We moved from simple “How much…who…when…” questions to more thoughtful ones, and it gave the students a different way into the mind of the teacher, as they tried to anticipate what I might consider important enough to ask.

             As we began The Taming of the Shrew one day, the first thing students who had been in class with me before asked was, “Are we going to have those quizzes?”  There was a groan from a couple of the new kids, then I heard a whispered, “No, they’re great!”

             Kids reading on their own—what a concept!