Advice for Reading

• Quality writing goes hand-in-hand with critical reading. If we want our students to improve their writing, they must improve their thinking, and that begins with improving their reading skills.

• We comprehend in layers. If I go to the theater and watch a really complex film and I feel like I leave having missed something, I am going to watch it again. And maybe again. With reading, our layers of understanding are 
  • General comprehension
  • Rhetorical purpose
  • Artistic rendering

• All three layers work together to build a picture that IS the author’s purpose and critically examining how they communicated that to our minds as well as our hearts.

• I recommend taking the time, building student analysis chops, and high levels of student confidence by doing all three as often as possible with SHORT PASSAGES excerpted from whatever essays, short stories, and novels that you are reading.

• When we take the time to do this, 
  • Student writing happens to improve immensely in their first drafts because they better understand what they are writing about.
  • In addition, it is a way to close reading skill gaps for those kids who are not readers outside of the classroom.
  • The process becomes an ingrained practice that students take with them into college and life, not to mention the benefit to testing at all levels. For those teaching AP, this is the method (protocol) that students automatically turned to in analyzing poetry and passages, which was one of the reasons they did so well (and the reason my AP scores were killer 😊).

• I say all of this because teachers tend to shave this process (if they even have students reread at all) down to two reads, which is better than nothing, and yet also lost opportunity.

 For independent study, check out Independent Book Study. 

For CLOSEST possible reading with a focus on Artistic Rendering, try Ink Imitation (Author Aping), which is a part of the independent book study described above.