Chapter 4  Connecting Students with Accessible Text

U.S. History!  Did you love it or hate it?  I loved it, mainly because the teacher who did the first half in 8th grade was a really charismatic guy.  The football coach that taught the second half in 9th grade had a hard act to follow, but he still did a good job.  Did you ever stop to consider that the body of information for U.S. History increases by 365 days every year?  I can't say that I did; Tovani points it out in this chapter.  U.S. History is typically a subject that relies heavily on a textbook, and we all know that when a school district purchases textbooks, they keep them in circulation for about a decade.  So in addition to teaching all the information in the textbook, a good U.S. History teacher has to find ways to include current events or recent events that have occurred since the publication of the textbook in the curriculum.  What this all boils down to is that there is no time in U.S. History class for students to read; the teachers need every minute of that class time to lecture on the vast body of information that has been mandated to be covered in 9 months.  That means students are reading at home, and even proficient readers are likely not retaining much of it.  Struggling readers are probably crying into the crease of the book and hoping for divine intervention when the test comes around.

Add the wrinkle that harder textbooks are being purchased by department heads in the interest of trying to raise academic achievement.  Now you have a subject that is vast, and certainly not always interesting, being conveyed to students in a way that may be beyond their understanding or reading level.  Sounds like a recipe for disaster!  Tovani says that the first way to remedy this is to use accessible text.

Where does a teacher find accessible text?  Usually not in textbooks, but rather in newspapers and magazines.  It doesn't have a "controlled vocabulary" and is generally pleasant to the eye and interesting to read.  But accessible text is not DUMBED DOWN.  Rather, it has the potential to engage both proficient and less-than-proficient readers in a way that is meaningful.  After all, no teacher is going to have a class in which all the students are reading at the exact same level.  But routinely expecting any student to read and comprehend text that is too hard for them will eventually lead to the student associating school with pointless reading.  And continued failure for struggling readers is especially damaging as they progress through school and find their difficulties multiply with increasingly complex texts.

The bottom line is: if kids aren't reading, they will never get better at it.  So Tovani suggests alternative texts that are more accessible than textbooks to use as supplementary information for students who read well and as jumping-off points for readers that struggle.  One suggestion she makes that I think sounds interesting is the use of "text sets."  Instead of just one textbook for a given subject, there are multiple reading materials available, varied in length, content, difficulty, and structure, but that have a unifying topic or theme.  This gives students several options for obtaining information on a topic and provides different texts to try out and practice different reading strategies.  This is an idea that is utilized often in elementary schools, and I think it's brilliant for use in secondary school, especially in light of the fact that textbooks are not unbiased and should not be regarded as the be-all, end-all source of information for any given subject. 

Tovani states, "Text sets are designed to give reluctant readers a choice of interesting and accessible texts." (p. 47)  She gives examples of how text sets can be helpful to explore Shakespeare, Greek mythology, literary classics, math, health class, and science.  I found myself picturing some text sets I could use in my art classroom about artists, about art movements, about techniques, materials and processes.....  It made me want to go online and start ordering books!!  It also made me realize that if we want students to make connections between what they read and what they experience in the real world, we need to offer a variety of texts to engage them on whatever level best suits them.

If you're interested, she offers a list of Accessible Texts, and I found an online link to them:
http://contentliteracy101.weebly.com/text-sets.html.  I think my favorite is "song lyrics",  which reminded me of a funny meme I saw.  (You guys that grew up in the 80s will like this one.) 

Annnnndd there's your song-poisoning for the evening.  You're welcome.