LLED520:

Lesson 3 Introduction

In this lesson, we will explore communities for reading young adult literature. Our purposes and values for reading arise from our membership in social groups within our culture. How we participate in a community of readers shapes how we think about ourselves as readers, and how we seek to use reading to satisfy life goals and purposes. How we might act as teachers, librarians, or parents to design a social context that encourages avid and engaged reading is a primary goal for this lesson.

Objectives

After completing this lesson, students will be able to ...

1. Describe the key characteristics of various activities in a community that supports avid and engaged reading.
2. Design specific actions that can be implemented to build a community of readers in a relevant life context (i.e.; classroom, library, home).

Lesson Readings & Activities

By the end of this lesson, make sure you have completed the readings and activities found in the Course Schedule.

Social Nature of Reading

While our reading activity provides prized individual moments, the value for all acts of reading are fundamentally social. First, reading involves a conversation between the author and the reader. Second, reading uses language that is constructed and learned through social interactions; thus, it carries meanings from many communities of participation over time and place. Third, acts of reading fulfill purposes in our lives as valued activities within the social communities to which we belong. If one of the communities to which we belong doesn’t value pleasure reading, then we are not likely to have much time or reinforcement from the members of that community to read independently for pleasure. Of course, a community for reading could develop with the very characters themselves from the many books we love to read, and we may develop an affinity for the way they talk and think as we feel a part of their literary social worlds.

Characteristics of Reading Activity

The social communities that frame our reading practices have particular characteristics and activities that encourage us to keep reading. To be more aware of how reading functions in these communities, and to be pro-active in engaging all the potential benefits of reading in our communities, we should identify and describe the characteristics of reading activity that takes place in our communities.

Practices

Activities with reading and writing that take place over and over again and become commonly expected by community members are often called practices, and there are many practices that have been recommended over the years to support positive reading development in schools.

Donalyn Miller encourages teachers to closely examine the purpose of each activity in a classroom to determine how it can support avid and engaged reading by students, and instill the habits of life-long reading. Without enacting this reflective practice, we might reinforce activities with reading that fail to help our students become better readers and, even worse, fail to help them integrate independent reading as a valued source of ideas and support in their lived worlds.

Silent Sustained Reading (SSR)

Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) is one of the practices that has been widely adopted and is still in use today with structured time for silent reading built into many school and classroom schedules. One characteristic feature of SSR is that all of the adults join the children in simultaneous reading. SSR has been a regular activity in classrooms for nearly 50 years.

Book Reports

Book reports are a common practice in schools that involve students sharing information from a book they have read independently. Unfortunately, a characteristic of these oral book reports is often a dull summary of plot that ends just before the spoiler and a final plea to read the book to find out for yourself what happens. Donalyn Miller describes (pp 137-138) how book commercials in her classroom generate an alternative literacy practice.

Check for Understanding

Overview:

This lesson’s Check for Understanding involves the use of a collaborative wiki to share and develop your ideas with your affinity group.

Prompt:

With your affinity group, create a graphic web page in your wiki space that identifies briefly several key classroom activities that you believe can support engagement in reading. Consider how to transform traditional activities with reading in ways that will better develop the habits of independent life-long reading.

Activities