Reclaiming English Classrooms for Our Students

In the realm of education, it can be difficult to determine whether our curriculums are imparting students with the skills they need for the future, or simply preparing them for more schooling. Both are important, arguably; if students don't know how to achieve what their other teachers ask for, then their academic futures could impact their post-graduation lives. On the other hand, students will likely not use test taking skills once they enter the work force or move on to other post-educational endeavors. To me, this raises the question of which is more important in education: future schooling, or the lives of students outside education's brick walls? 

In English classrooms, we English teachers often feel the need to believe that all students should develop a love for reading simply by looking at a stack of books and taking our own excitement through some sort of educational osmosis phenomenon. We want them to become readers because we see reading as a way to open new worlds and world views. Research shows that students who become readers also tend to be high achievers inside and outside of school. Readers are thinkers and problem-solvers.  

 

  

In the event that they don't magically turn into readers, we  tell ourselves that through our lessons, students will develop this love. We take all of our literary knowledge and apply it to lessons and assignments in hopes that students will walk away with a book close to their hearts, and a new appreciation for the world. 

Unfortunately, the foundations that we build for our students may be rotten. Instead of creating readers, we may be pushing students away from reading and learning. 

On their way to gaining knowledge and skills that will aid them in the future, students often end up in a labyrinth hidden in our schools. Within these walls, students have trouble seeing how their future goals, interests, and education track are related. 

Standardized tests take up a large central position in this labyrinth. These tests, though useful for assessing how successful a school or teacher is, frequently cause more harm in the education system than good. 

Standardized tests are designed to show whether a school or teacher is successfully teaching their students according to the academic standards put out by the board of education. These standards call for students to be educated in life skills. The English standards usually include teaching students how to analyze and assess works, and to be able to use a wide range of genres and mediums for a variety of purposes.

The intent is to provide students with an education that serves not only to build scaffolding for future schooling, but also contributes to their futures beyond institutionalized learning. 

The problem with standardized testing is how it looms over teachers and classrooms like a beast hidden in the labyrinth. It threatens to attack schools and teachers with students who score low on the tests. 

In theory, scaring teachers into working harder to sew the standard curriculum into the minds of students should lead to a successful system where teachers are kept in line by these tests. The reality is that many teachers fall back on age-old practices that work as temporary learning patches, but do not have a history of creating readers or showing students how to think critically.

 

One of these age-old practices is the grammar drill. Teachers utilize a whole day or week of class time to dust off the grammar exercises and run their students through the motions. Students fill out these worksheets and go over the answers in class. They know that they are expected to understand and complete the drills, and tuck that knowledge away for use on standardized tests. 

Using these drills, students arm themselves with what many of them already know about grammar, and charge into battle. 

These drills leave students with a mechanical understanding of what grammar looks like. They learn how to label the parts of grammar, and how to recognize when it looks wrong by comparing it to textbook examples which show up on the tests. Being able to break down the mechanical elements of grammar is not the same as being able to use certain patterns. 

Students also learn that grammar is something to struggle through, a sort of necessary evil embedded in the very nature of English class. 

Another teacher favorite is the reading chart. This tool comes out when teachers know that readers achieve, and want to turn their students into readers. These usually come out in elementary and middle school as a way of encouraging (or forcing) students to read at home. What they actually do is weigh students down, and connect reading to school with a heavy chain. Instead of reading for the sake of reading, students end up having to read to fill a requirement. 

The students who already love reading are harmed by these tools as well. The reading log teaches readers that reading is supposed to happen only for school, and may also serve as a reminder that their teacher does not believe that they can motivate themselves and actually enjoy reading on their own time. 

Many teachers also utilize reading quizes for class books, as well as accelerated reader programs which require students to answer reading quizes after completing their "independent reading" books. I've put the term "independent reading" book into quotes because when students are required to take a quiz to prove that they've read the book, it goes from being something independent that they chose to being just another reading assignment. 

Similar to reading charts, reading quizes often remind students that not only are books a school item, but also that their teachers don't trust them to have read what they claim that they read. Yet again, a pleasurable activity which can increase student performance becomes merely a functional assignment that students put on the same level of boring as other homework assignments. 

Reading quizes also teach students how to read for minor details, or details that they feel they may be quizzed over without needing to assess why these items may be important to pull out of the text. Students may learn how to read sections of text for little details for the multiple choice sections of the standardized tests, but they are not given a chance to draw connections between these details and the story as a whole, or how the story applies to their lives. 

What we are left with is a group of students who feel like books and school are related. Many of these students will learn only to pick up books when their teachers ask it of them.

When taking on the standardized tests, students reach into their toolboxes from drills and quizes to pull out the scraps of experience they still remember how to use at the most surface-level of functionality. Some will have absorbed enough to complete the test with little struggle, while others experience a wider gap between what they know and the test material. 

Whether this is the fault of standardized testing is up for debate among education boards across the state. I don't know if the issue is simple enough to blame it solely on the tests. 

Instead of pointing fingers at standardized testing, we English teachers need to focus on what is lost in the classroom when we set out to prepare our students only for test situations, letting real life fall to the wayside. 

We want our students to learn that books offer world views, and new worlds can be discovered simply by flipping through the pages. Of course, we want our students to become able to analyze books, and to gain the skills to recognize various literary elements, but we can't teach them these things with the above mentioned practices anymore. If we want our students to be prepared for future schooling, the standardized tests, and life, we need to give them the chance to explore texts with us as a guide.

The question is, how can we achieve this goal within the confines of the school system? When some schools may require us to teach specific texts at each grade level, how do we give power to our students while still completing the curriculum requirements and sending our students off to the next grade level with all of the skills they need to continue to succeed?

How do we function without age-old school traditions like book reports and grammar quizes?

One way to spark students to read more, and thus turn them into readers is to give them time in class for reading of individual books of their choosing. In _The Book Whisperer_, Donalyn Miller, a middle school English teacher, argues that this is one of the best methods for creating readers. Teachers should set aside a chunk of class each day for silent reading. Miller calls for 30 minutes, but with limited time resources, I'd say that more teachers will be able to get away with an average of 15-20 minutes without incurring the wrath of the department head for their use of class time. 

For this method to work, Miller argues, a teacher needs to be able to help their students find books that are relevant to their interests. Some students will come into our classrooms with the idea that only "readers" read already in their heads, and will resist the concept that books can be interesting even to them. These students might need some extra patience and help when finding books of interest. 

Miller says that in-class silent reading time is important for students because reading started at school often leads a student to continue reading at home. The idea is that once a student starts a book, they may be interested in it enough to keep reading on their own time. Since many students will not start reading on their own at home without prompting, but reading time in class may encourage them to start the habit.

For optimization of this technique, Miller says that teachers should join their students in reading during this period in order to model reading habits. Often times, when teachers do have silent reading in their classrooms, they fill this time with background chats with students, or with ruffling papers as they grade quizes. Miller argues that this may be distracting to some students, and recommends only reading during this time.

Reading on it's own is not going to encourage students to begin thinking critically about the books that they are reading. To accomplish this, many teachers ask their students to turn in book reports, which are more often than not in the form of essays. Miller has a strategy to avoid book reports, which may trap students back into that track of seeing books only as something boring to be read at school. 

In her book, Miller says that she gets students thinking critically about books by having them read and discuss book reviews, book blurbs (the information on the back of books to catch potential readers' eyes), and summaries, and how these things are different. She and her students then use these three mediums to discuss books both in written form, and in conversation with one another. 

Once or twice a week, Miller says that she has a student or two give a 2-3 minute book "commercial" in which they tell their classmates about a book they are reading using blurbs, summaries, what they thought was awesome, and relating it to what they've been learning in class when aplicable. 

While disclosing her methods for inspiring students to read, Miller emphasizes time and again the importance of teachers talking about their own reading habits and their own love of books. Sharing opinions and interests about books with students acts as modeling, and encourages them to continue reading. Miller highly suggests showing great excitement and enthusiasm about books in the classroom and out of it. 

Giving students time to read on their own, and actively discussing books with them allows them space to think about the books for themselves without worrying about what the teacher expects them to find in a book. Students will begin to think critically about the books they are reading. 

To supplement conversations about books, teachers can consider asking their students periodically what kind of evidence they are finding in their book that pertains to material they are studying in class. For example, a teacher who is teaching foreshadowing might ask his or her students for examples they may have noticed in their individual reading books. 

Allowing students to generate their own ideas and opinions on the material they are reading makes reading more enjoyable, and further encourages them to become readers. 

Allowing students to discuss with one another about their books also encourages them to become readers, as well as critical thinkers. If students are allowed to explore various aspects of their books with one another, they are able to draw connections and recognize patterns between texts. Creating an environment in which students are free to discuss books also welcomes students to form the habit of reading, and thus become readers. 

With all this reading, one might wonder how a classroom still has time for classics assigned to the entire class. Keeping time for these books when a school requires them is important, so long as the teacher remembers to keep the feeling of community while moving into class books. 

For classic units, Miller also suggests breaking the class into small groups with classics that they've selected around a certain theme. To me, this idea of small groups also works with every group reading the same novel.

 This smaller group environment frees students up to discuss the books in an environment in which everyone gets a voice. Using this method also allows students who may struggle with reading to keep up with a smaller group, which may seem like a less daunting task than keeping up with the whole class.

Up until now, I have named several methods for replacing reading quizes and charts while still creating readers. These items are important, but are also not the only things that matter in English classrooms. For standardized testing, future academic success, and success in the world beyond education, students also need to develop an understanding of grammar in their English classrooms. 

Grammar drills serve little purpose other than creating a barrier between students and grammar, yet they need these important skills to succeed. What can we do to help our students learn and understand grammar?

Keith Polette advocates using writing to teach students reading in her text _Teaching Grammar Through Writing_, a reference book for teachers in grades 4-12. In the book, Polette offers a variety of writing activities in which students use parts of grammar in specific writing activities. 

In one activity, called an "Adverb Poem," students are asked to write a poem in this format:

adverb,

adverb,

adverb,

noun,

verb,

noun.

This poem requires students to know what kinds of words are adverbs, and what tense they can use each word in. 

Polette has a wide variety of activities such as this, which allow students to explore a wide range of grammar from the basic technical labels, to the mechanics of how to construct sentences. Through these exercises, students learn how to actually use grammar and punctuation rather than merely seeing it on a worksheet and not translating it into the context of real application.

Now is the time for teachers to start thinking of new ways to teach importnat content to students  Standardized tests may make it difficult to teach students without falling to the temptation of teaching them only how to take tests, but it is up to us teachers to rise above the temptation. If we teach our students to analyze and assess material that they come across as we give them content specific information, they will develop the skills necessary to pass any standardized test with higher scores than they could if we relied only on the age-old teaching methods.

It is time to stop losing our students in the labyrinth of learning, and start helping them build bridges between their interests, future careers, and school. Creating readers is part of this process, but we also need to give our students room to become thinkers. We can't train them to be test-taking machines when we know that after they finish their educations, they will rarely use their test-taking skills. 

Now is the time to revise how English classes are run, and reclaim English classes for our students. 

Bibliography:

Polette, Keith. Teaching Grammar through Writing: Activities to Develop Writer's Craft in All Students in Grades 4-12. Boston: Pearson/A&B, 2008. Print.

Miller, Donalyn, and Jeff Anderson. The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2009. Print.

Beers, G. Kylene. When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers, 6-12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003. Print.

"Common Core State Standards Initiative." Colorado Academic Standards. Colorado Department of Education, Dec. 2010. Web. Feb. 2013.