accountability tests measure—for
instance, whether students can find the
main idea in a particular text, or even
more specific and inconsequential,
whether they can make an inference
using just a couple of lines of text. For
the long term, what we really want
students to be able to do is read across
texts critically and analytically. We have
become overly concerned with whether
students can comprehend a particular
text and not concerned enough about
whether students can use multiple texts
to grapple with big ideas.
Even the wording of standards and
their supporting materials perpetuate a
narrow perspective on reading and
writing to learn. For instance, in the
curriculum framework for U.S. history
linked to the Virginia Standards of
Learning (Virginia Department of Education, 2008), most of the essential questions to guide instruction are designed to
elicit a common and finite response:
“What were the reasons for the United
States becoming involved in World War
I?” (p. 15); “How did the African American struggle for equality become a mass
movement?” (p. 28). Once students have
learned the answers to these questions,
they have little reason to continue
reading unless we provide them with
texts that make them want to know
more.
. . . To Reading Endlessly
What leaves us wanting to read more are
unanswered questions, issues that have a
degree of ambiguity, and ideas that
evoke multiple interpretations or possibilities. Reading solely to remember
information in order to meet curriculum
standards does not require problem
solving, new understandings, or new
ways of thinking. Reading and thinking
end at the conclusion of the text.
Alternatively, students who read
across texts and genres will read more
and read more deeply. Maria Nichols
(2009) describes a process to help
elementary students build understand-
When it comes to
subject-area reading
materials, we are
stuck in a rut.
ings through text sets—collections of
sources of information in different
genres that explore a shared topic or
issue. In text sets preconstructed by the
teacher or created by students themselves, the students engage in ongoing
reading, writing, and conversation on
curriculum topics—and they also gain
insights into the value of multiple
sources of information and the purposes
and uses of various genres.
Nichols describes one unit in which
students read a collection of texts about
George Washington as part of their study
of American heroes. The text set
included a simple biography (George
Washington, Capstone Press, 1999); a
more in-depth comic-book-style biography (George Washington: First President,
Scholastic, 2004); the Mount Vernon
Web site ( www.mountvernon.org),
which offered students a look at Washington’s impressive home but also the
revelation of slave quarters; a book
examining Washington’s service in the
Revolutionary War that contained many
primary sources (When Washington
Crossed the Delaware: A Wintertime Story
for Young Patriots, Simon and Schuster,
2004); and the fictionalized story George
Washington’s Teeth (Square Fish, 2007).
Each of these texts added to the
students’ understanding of the question,
What is a hero?
Likewise, older students can grapple
with tough issues by reading critically to
consider all angles of a topic. For
instance, students may read A Child
Called It (Health Communications,
1995); Three Little Words (Atheneum,
2008); and Lesson from a Dead Girl
(Candlewick, 2007) to obtain three
glimpses into physical child abuse.
Through their varying perspectives,
these books can help students understand the complex causes, responses,
culpability, and implications associated
with abuse.
To ensure that students will adopt the
habit of reading to figure out the present
and future, rather than just to revisit the
past, we must give them opportunities to
read timely texts. Digital texts of all sorts
are useful because they often deliver the
most recent information and contain
unanswered questions.
For instance, students studying the
U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights might
review recent online news articles about
citizens’ rights being decided in a court
of law. A quick Google search yields a
host of texts describing teens involved in
First Amendment cases, such as the right
to carry a purse with a Confederate flag
patch attached to it in school (Hudson,
2009) and the right to post signs with
religious messages on a high school football field (Brown, 2009).
But keeping up with the onslaught of
information currently available is not the
only reason to embrace new kinds of
media in K– 12 classrooms. Moje (2008)
argues that because experts within the
disciplines (for example, historians and
scientists) already use sophisticated new
literacy practices to develop understanding within their fields, schools need
to mirror those efforts across the content
areas. Reproducing old ideas from old
texts can no longer be the focus of
literacy-based learning.
Beginning the Shift
We hear a lot of lip service paid to
equipping students with “21st century
literacy skills.” But when it comes to
subject-area reading materials, we are
stuck in a rut. In our efforts to improve
literacy-based learning, our first order of
business ought to be a serious examination of the reading materials from which
we expect students to learn.
