Building Life-Long Readers One Book at a Time

Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) [2] is a staple of many classrooms. At my school it lives in Advisory, a 50-minute mixed-grade class that balances literacy development with study hall and school-culture building. The goal of SSR is simple: For 30 minutes twice a week the entire school population is reading silently—and enjoying it.

In theory, students will develop reading fluency [3] (speed and ease) by reading more frequently through SSR. In a school without a library or librarian, we’ve managed to cultivate a decent SSR collection. However, it is always a trick to match 250 different students with books they actually like to read. Over the last week, this was my task.

Most avid readers will tell you that they didn’t fall in love with reading by learning reading strategies or being forced to read silently. They fell in love with reading because they fell in love with a book. So one of the keys to getting reluctant or struggling readers to read may be to find a book they can love. What makes this so complicated? “Interesting” is different for each student, and each student needs that high-interest book to be at a level they can read independently. Even our most advanced readers don’t always know which book to choose.

For example, 12th-grader Janet came to me helplessly and said, “Ms. Thomas, what book should I get?” I was surprised when she couldn’t tell me what genre she liked. She finally admitted she wanted something hard, a rare request. Janet knows she wants to be a doctor, so I suggested Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains [4]. We have a class set because we are a health-focused school, but no one ever checks them out. With international attention on Haiti this year, it was easy to sell them when I told Janet the book was about Dr. Paul Farmer, a man who has dedicated his life to the public health of Haitians.

Unlike Janet, 11th-grader Dalia didn’t hesitate for a moment to choose her book. She grabbed a copy of The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah [5]. “I always read this book,” she bragged. “I’ve read it for the last three years.” It’s understandable that a young reader who finds a book that speaks to her would cling to it. I’ve had students claim they have never read a book cover to cover when, in fact, they have read S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders [6] three times. So I asked Dalia what she liked about this book. She listed the reasons: female protagonist, inner-city drama, African-American characters. I suggested she check out Veronica Chambers’ memoir Mama’s Girl, [7] about another African-American woman from Brooklyn. She looked at the cover, and the next thing I knew she was suggesting it to her friend.

These small victories were overshadowed by the reaction of ninth-grader Genero, a young man who stood five feet away from the bookshelf with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. Cheerleader of books, I said, “What kind of book do you like to read?” I knew what the answer would be: I hate reading. Second try: “Yes, but if you had to read, what would you choose?” My stupid question warranted only a stare. Third try: “What kind of movies do you like?” I got a shoulder shrug followed by a series of mumbles, “Action. Mystery. Scary. I dunno.” I scanned the shelves and all I could see was a complete lack of action, mystery or scary books. When I turned back the young man had grabbed a copy of the book closest to him, a voluminous one to boot. He was so anxious to be done confronting the fact that he doesn’t enjoy reading that he was gone before I could offer something he might really like.

Next week in my ninth-grade English class we’ll start to unpack this reluctance to read. Inspired by a lesson from Chris Tovani’s book, I Read It, But I Don’t Get It [8], students will present their “important book.” This is not always a beloved book, but it is one that makes a deep impression and shapes the student as a reader (or non-reader). Finding a book for a student to love is only part of the struggle to create life-long readers. Finding out what baggage a student brings to reading is even more important. We’ll go back to the moment that shaped their reading identity and rebuild from the ground up.

Thomas is a Teaching Tolerance blogger and English teacher at Life Academy of Health and Bioscience in Oakland, Calif.