“If you make a student feel like a reader, he’ll become a reader.” Donald Graves

“If you make a student feel like a reader, he’ll become a reader.”Donald Graves

Academic Literacy for Secondary Students Motivating Students By Debi Rice

Reading Reasons Motivating Secondary Students

Building Readers

Building Block 1: • Students need access to high-interest reading materials.

Building Block 2: • Students must have a time to read and a place to read.

Building Block 3: • Teachers must model the value of reading.

Building Block 4: • Teachers must stop grading everything.

Building Block 5: • Teachers must provide structure to a reading program.

Building Block 6: • Students must want to read---they must see what’s in it for them.

“Why Should I Read?” 10 Reading Reasons

Reason 1: Reading is Rewarding • Favorite first lines/Favorite text lines • Reading minute • Reading Thought of the Week

Reason 2: Reading Builds a Mature Vocabulary • What do you do when you encounter an unfamiliar word? • Prefixes, Suffixes, Roots • Predict the meaning

Reason 4: Reading is Hard, and “Hard” is necessary • Want to get your Driver’s License? • An Educated Electorate • A Proposed Law • The Fine Print • Reading the World News • Selective Service and other applications

Reason 3: Reading Makes you a Better Writer • Reading and Writing are similar processes; both actively engage in constructing meaning from and with text. • Both use a common tool kit of cognitive strategies – planning, prior knowledge, asking questions, making connections, summarizing, revising, reflecting, and evaluatiing

Reason 5: Reading Makes you Smarter • Brain Exercise • Read all about it • Things I learned today (10 things I learned in history today)

There is an “increasingly dramatic disparity between skills children are acquiring in school and the skills they will need to obtain a good job. In 1950s 20% jobs were professional, 20% were skilled, and 60% unskilled. In 1990s, 20% professional, 60% skilled, only 20% unskilled. The skills required to earn a decent income have changed radically, but little has changed in education. The gap between the average annual earnings of a high school and college graduate has widened significantly in the past 15 years. “No longer will today’s high school diploma lead to a job that will guarantee entry into the middle class.” Reason 6: Reading Prepares You for the World of Work

Activities • Get a Job • Reading is Job One

Reason 7: Reading Well is Financially Rewarding • Students are being paid to attend school. • Average life earnings for non-graduate = $936,000. • Average life earnings for graduate = $1, 216,000. • High school diploma is worth $280,000. • Four years of high school = about 700 days. • Students are “paid” $280,000 for 700 days. • Therefore students earn $400 per day. • Therefore students earn $66.67 to attend your class each day (based on a six-period day). Students who finish college earn a lot more than that per day.

Reason 8: Reading Opens the Door to College and Beyond • Getting in College Reading Shape • The Key to College • The Road to Higher Learning

Reason 9: Reading Arms You Against Oppression • Think about a time when your inability to read something costs you. • James Baldwin said, “It is expensive to be poor.” • All of us have been taken advantage of at some time or another because of our failure to read something accurately.

Reason 10: Reading Gives You a Moral Standard • Literature is a “great thing.” • Exploring the ethical dilemmas characters face and the choices they make requires students to wrestle with their morality • Literature raises questions of the human condition • Think about this… When our students read great pieces like Romeo & Juliet, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, or the Declaration of Independence, or Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, or any other great works, they are finding their way for themselves by joining the human conversation.

Reading Reasons Across the Content Areas • Motivating readers is not a content specific job and should not be left to one teacher or one subject area. • Think of it as a well-organized campaign that extends across content areas, across the school day, across the school year.

Develop Your Own Reading Lens • Reasons to Read are Everywhere • What reasons can you and your students come up with?

“If you make a student feel like a reader, he’ll become a reader.” Donald Graves