Steven L. Layne
Stenhouse Publishers
One of the things I love about Spring Break is that it provides me an opportunity to catch up on some professional reading. Igniting A Passion for Reading has been sitting on my shelf for a few months, and it's the first book I put into my "Spring Break Book Stack" last Friday. Steven Layne begins the book by introducing us to the idea that teaching reading should go beyond just teaching reading skills. A complete reader is someone who has mastery of fluency, phonetics, comprehension, semantics, syntax, AND shows evidence of interest, motivation, and engagement. He argues that our curriculum should go beyond the skills mandated by our states curriculum. We should be teaching the affective domain of reading as well. He provides a startling statistic - over half of Americans ages 18 to 24 reported reading no books for pleasure in 2002. We are producing kids who can read, but choose not to. The rate of aliteracy (being able to read but choosing not to) is growing at a faster rate than illiteracy! If we want to create real readers, we must begin addressing this problem.
Each of Steven's chapters provide extremely practical ways to develop engaged readers in your classroom. One of my favorite chapters was about knowing your students. In the beginning of the year, I always use interest inventories and meet with my students individually to get to know them better as readers. But what do I do with this information? Steven says the most important words we can say to readers is, "I thought of you." When I read a children's book, do I think of the student who it would be just right for? For my struggling readers, am I actively looking for books that will match their interests? He challenged me to know my students better, and to use that knowledge more effectively. He also provides some extremely practical advice in regards to goal setting. We must make our goals public (post them in a place everyone can see), return to them often, and set new goals each quarter. Has my goal setting become another "teacher thing" that we forget about after a few weeks, or is it something that matters to my kids?
Another chapter talks about "book chats." I read a lot of children's books, and I keep a reading notebook with all my ratings and impressions of the books I've read. But Steven's book made me realize how I keep all these "chats" to myself. I need to be sharing my notebook with my students on a more consistent basis. I need to display the books I love - talk about them in front of my students. I have a lot of individual "chats" with students, but I need to create a classroom culture that is continually talking up books. Steven's "golden shelf" idea is brilliant (chapter 8).
I think this is an extremely important book for our times. In today's educational climate of testing, testing, testing - we can't forget our ultimate goals. I teach because I want to see children grow into readers, writers, scientists, and thinkers. Igniting A Passion for Reading reminds us of what is truly important about teaching and learning.
