Text Complexity and the Common Core: A Close Reading, Part 2

Last week in my post, The Common Core and Text Complexity: A Close Reading, Part 1, I discussed the problematic aspects of the adjustment of the Lexile scores that was perpetrated to match the Core Content State Standards (CCSS) concept of college and career readiness. Today, I would like to look closely at how the CCSS define text complexity and how this could be empowering to teachers, if teachers take advantage of what the document is saying and seize the initiative.

Appendix A of the CCSS defines text complexity. It is very important that all teachers understand this definition because it is useful and empowering. Text Complexity is made up of three dimensions: quantitative, qualitative, and reader and task. Quantitative measures include the useful, but limited “reading level” measures like the Fry Readability Graph and Lexile scores. The CCSS has focused on Lexile scores and has recalculated them to reflect the push for greater complexity. Qualitative measures include such issues as considerateness of text (clear structure, coherence, audience appropriateness), knowledge demands, use of figurative language, vocabulary, etc. Reader and task measures concern themselves with the cognitive abilities, motivation and experience of students. For a clear and complete explanation of these three elements of text complexity see Fisher, Fry and Lapp (2012) Text Complexity: Raising Rigor in Reading, Newark, DE: IRA.

As you can see, the teacher plays a central role in the selection of the text to be used in instruction. The teacher balances the qualitative demands of the text with the characteristics of the students as readers and the reading task at hand to determine text complexity and appropriateness. It is a heady responsibility and also very good news. The CCSS are asking the teacher, the person best in the position to know, to determine what texts to use based not only on a simple calculation of level, but also based on what the teacher knows about the challenges embedded in the text and the special characteristics of the individual reader.

And yet I worry. I worry that simplistic readings of this call for greater text complexity will lead to disempowerment of teachers and inappropriate reading assignments for students. Will administrators, curriculum writers and text book publishers ignore the role of the teacher in choosing texts and ratchet up text complexity for all students no matter their abilities and needs? And what about the tests? Will the tests show the same degree of considerateness to readers as the CCSS seem to provide in Appendix A?

This why it is critical that those on the front lines, the teachers, are armed with the information below, which is directly stated in Appendix A. When you are pushed on text complexity, push back with this:

          1)  Students need opportunities to stretch their reading abilities but also to experience the satisfaction and pleasure of easy, fluent reading within them, both of which the Standards allow for. (CCSS Appendix A, page 9) (Apparently the standards also allow for prepositions at the end of a sentence!)

           2) Students’ ability to read complex text does not always develop in a linear fashion.(CCSS Appendix A, page 9)

          3)  Teachers who have had success using particular texts that are easier than those required for a given grade band should feel free to continue to use them so long     as the general movement during a given school year is toward texts of higher levels of complexity. Students reading well above and well below grade-band level need additional support. (CCSS Appendix A, page 9)

As I read these statements, I see a clear call for teacher judgment in selecting texts for students. I also see a clear recognition that harder texts are not meant to be a steady diet for the reader. I suspect that many of the creators of the CCSS read many things that are well below their reading level. Children should have the same right.

Why is this important? For one reason, I believe that many educational leaders will hear the call for more complex texts and will try to force teachers to use texts that are simply harder. Remember “rigor” is not in the difficulty of the text, but in the vigor of the instruction. Texts that are too difficult for a particular reader are not rigorous; they are just hard (See my post on rigor here). I also believe that publishing companies, under the guise of the publishers guidelines provided them by the authors of the CCSS for ELA, will soon be on the market with anthologies purported to “meet the standards” that will not meet the needs of many students.

It is the classroom teacher who will be the last line of defense for the students and for appropriate reading instruction. Go into battle with a copy of CCSS Appendix A, with the parts discussed above highlighted, so that you can inform the uninformed.

Text Complexity and the Common Core: A Close Reading, Part 1

Appendix A of the CCSS is intended to explain the concept of text complexity. Here is the first sentence.

            One of the key requirements of the Common Core State Standards
             for Reading is that all students must be able to comprehend texts
            of steadily increasing complexity as they progress through school.

Now doesn't that statement just make you want to say, “Duh!” When has that not been a goal for all students? I personally have never heard a fifth grade teacher say, “I want my kids to be able to read like third graders by the end of the year.” We all want our students to be able to read increasingly complex text.

Appendix A goes on to argue for stepping up the complexity of texts that students are reading because current high school graduates are not college and career ready to read texts that they are required to read in college or the workplace. The problem the authors sight is that “K–12 reading texts have actually trended downward in difficulty in the last half century (CCSS, Appendix A, pg 2).” At the same time text complexity has remained level or increased on the college and workplace level.

In order to address this issue, the authors of the CCSS in ELA (Coleman and Pimentel) have, in conjunction with the company that introduced the Lexile measurement, MetaMetrics, realigned the Lexile scale stair step fashion in increments moving down from what they have determined is the entry Lexile level for college freshmen (Lexile 1335).

A further problem, according to the authors, is that students are provided  “considerable scaffolding—assistance from teachers, class discussions, and the texts themselves (in such forms as summaries, glossaries, and other text features)—with reading (CCSS, Appendix A, pg 3).” In college classrooms, they assert,  much more independence is required in more complex texts.

Let’s take a closer look at these assertions. When it comes to the difficulty of texts being dumbed downward, while true for high school text books, it is simply not true for K-3 reading materials, which have tended to get harder as greater expectations have been placed on early literacy (Hiebert, 2012). There is plenty of evidence to suggest that exiting third grade students reading at a Lexile level of 540L to 580L are successful in future grades. There is no evidence that the new level posited by the standards, 790L by the end of third grade, will lead to college and career success (Hiebert, 2012). This is an arbitrary number not supported by the research.

Hiebert’s analysis of the CCSS recommended Lexile levels in primary reading calls into question the entire scheme to up the Lexile levels across the board. If the 790L is unsupported and inadvisable as a benchmark for third grade, why should we believe that 980L is appropriate for 5^th grade or 1155 for eighth grade? Where is the research supporting these designations? If these designations are used to design tests, how valid will the findings be?

The authors of the CCSS are also concerned with the considerable scaffolding students are provided with K-12, because this kind of scaffolding is not available on the college level. It is true, of course, that we want our students to become more and more independent in reading as they move through school. It is also true that as students are asked to read more and more challenging text, they need and deserve the scaffolding that skilled teachers provide. I wonder why the authors did not ask college professors why they do not provide appropriate scaffolding for their students when they give them difficult readings? Is the job of the K-12 teacher to compensate for the lack of appropriate instruction on the college level?

Based on this analysis, I have the following recommendations to make in the face of the CCSS on text complexity.

            1. Ask the authors of the CCSS to provide research that supports the changed Lexile scores at each level. The research must demonstrate that these are indeed the appropriate levels for students to achieve college and career readiness down the road. Until that research is provided, make no decisions             based on tests designed with these new standards as the model.

            2. For K-3 teachers and administrators, continue the focus on developing fluent, comprehending readers in the 540L-580L Lexile range by the end of grade 3. This range is supported by research as appropriate for future reading success.

            3. Continue to provide appropriate scaffolding for students as they read challenging text and continue to provide easier texts where students can be successful independently.

Despite the views expressed here, the news is not all bleak from Appendix A of the CCSS. In Part 2 of this post, coming soon, I will look at how text complexity is defined and how this definition should empower teachers, if only teachers are allowed to use their knowledge of pedagogy, texts and children to apply what is recommended.

What Constitutes Rigorous Reading?

At the gym yesterday, I climbed resolutely onto the treadmill and set the speed for 3.2 MPH. Next to me on the right a young woman was jogging on her treadmill at a speed at least twice mine. On my left an older gentleman with some physical limitations was walking at a considerably slower pace than mine, but he was clearly working hard to keep moving. We all smiled and nodded at each other in silent acknowledgement that we were each getting a rigorous workout. The rigor was determined by our relative physical conditions (in my case 66 years-old with two recently replaced knees and seriously under tall for my weight), our ages and our goals for the exercise. Three treadmills, three different workouts, three definitions of rigor.

The term rigor is splashed all over the Common Core State Standards. I have a visceral reaction against the term because it seems to suggest that instruction over the past 40 years or so lacked rigor – a suggestion that as a lifelong reading teacher I find offensive. For a wonderful take on why the word rigor is the wrong word in this context check out Joanne Yatvin’s essay here.  My greatest fear is that teachers and administrators will mistake rigor to mean that kids should be reading harder texts. My fear is intensified when I see sample reading lessons in CCSS approved websites like achievethecore.org, that ask children to read texts that are well above their likely reading level.

Just as the rigor of a workout does not reside in the treadmill, the rigor of reading does not reside in the text. In their important book, Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading (2013), Beers and Probst say it best: “rigor is not an attribute of text, but a characteristic of the behavior with that text (p.20, emphasis mine).”  As Goldilocks discovered about furniture, texts can be too soft, too hard or “just right.” A text that is too difficult for a child to read it is not rigorous, it is just hard. If I had to run on the treadmill like the young woman next to me, I would soon give up, because the workout is too hard. Likewise when children are faced with text that is too difficult, they will disengage.

And that brings me to my next point.  Any definition of rigor in reading must begin with engagement. As Beers and Probst (2013) again point out, “The essence of rigor is engagement and commitment (pg. 23).”  Without engagement, there is no commitment; without commitment, there is no rigor.

So, to insure rigor, we must ensure engagement and commitment. To ensure engagement and commitment we must be sure that students encounter texts that are both accessible and interesting.

This very often will mean different texts for different students, but it could also mean the same text for a group of students or even the whole class. The key will be the kind of scaffolding provided by the teacher. If a text is particularly challenging, the teacher might choose to read the text aloud. Many rich, I daresay rigorous, discussions can come from a group of engaged students guided to deeper comprehension through a teacher led read aloud. Sometimes the scaffolding will involve a richer pre-reading activity that prepares the students for some of the bumps they may encounter on the road to understanding the text. Sometimes the scaffolding will include text dependent questions that guide the students to greater understanding. Sometimes the scaffolding will be well constructed small group discussions that help students help each other learn.

I think it is useful for the literacy teacher to think of the CCSS call for rigor as a call for deep comprehension of text. Deep comprehension calls for students to be able to answer three basic questions:

            What does the author say in the text? (literal understanding of text)
            How does the author communicate that message? (rhetorical devices, figurative language)
            Why does this text matter? (thematic relevance, both personal and universal)

Armed with these three questions, the teacher can guide the students to deep comprehension of text and a developmentally appropriate rigorous literacy workout.

So under the CCSS it is important to remember that differentiation still matters, having students read text at appropriate levels still matters and having students have many different encounters with text – small group, independent and large group - still matters.

In a future post, I will explore the standard on text complexity and what that should mean for teachers.

A Modest Proposal: How About Real Estate Vouchers?

Education reform types like to say that no child’s educational opportunity should be determined by zip code. Who could not agree with that? That is why I am surprised that the reformy solutions to so-called “failing schools” do nothing to change a child’s zip code. Maybe that is why voucher programs and charter schools have not been successful. You can bend the rules all you want to try to make charter schools successful, but the evidence shows that charter schools in general do no better than the public schools in educating children and some do much worse. You see, the zip code for the children doesn't change.

Vouchers haven’t worked either. I am not sure why we are surprised. Giving a poor family 2 – 5 thousand dollars in a voucher is not going to allow them to find the extra 5K they need to send the child to parochial school, let alone the extra 20 or 30K they would need to send a child to a private school. Vouchers probably would help middle class families defray the cost of sending their children  to a school of their choice, say one with fewer children of color or one that teaches creationism. Perhaps that is why they are so popular among some politicians. But for poor children, the zip code remains the same.

So I would like to put forward a modest proposal for educational reform. Provide poor families in urban areas where the schools are struggling with real estate vouchers. Real estate vouchers would allow these families to move to a new zip code, a zip code with a high performing public school district.

This is really quite simple actually, because despite what the reform types would like us to believe, there is no shortage of very high performing school districts within a fifteen minute drive of most urban areas in the country. Just for example let us take the capital city of that reformy governor, Chris Christie. Trenton, New Jersey’s school district has suffered from years of financial neglect and mismanagement and of course the flight of the monied class to the suburbs. It is a district with many problems, but only a few miles outside Trenton’s borders are at least 6 high performing districts. Districts where the vast majority of the students graduate from high school,  excel at the standardized tests, get into the best colleges and have all the opportunities that it is this country’s contract with our children to provide.

So what we do for parents who would like their children to attend one of these glorious public institutions is provide them with a voucher that allows them to move into these townships with excellent schools. Fortunately, in many of these areas there are McMansions standing empty due to foreclosures in the last few years, so lots of housing is available, and I am sure that the banks and financial institutions would be happy to work with the education reformers to make it possible for these folks to move to these areas. After all the financial sector was responsible for much of the downturn in the economy, so they are surely ready to do something for society at this point.

Let me be clear, these real estate vouchers would be private vouchers. If we took the money from the public school coffers they could never afford to continue providing the excellent education they are already providing. The private sector could use all the monies in their war chests that they currently use for failed experiments like charters and vouchers to underwrite the program. I am sure Teach for America could pitch in a few hundred million from their rich endowment. There is no telling what the Broad and Gates Foundations could contribute. Why just the money that could be redirected from state and national lobbying campaigns could surely provide real estate vouchers for thousands of children.

Of course there may be a downside here for the reformers. If enough inner city folks take advantage of the real estate vouchers, there may be a shortage of housing in the suburbs. The solution though is clear. With the inner city emptying out, the wealthy could move in and gentrify the urban areas. With this influx of the monied class into the city, I bet after a decade or two even the public schools in urban areas would improve; new, clean and safe buildings would be built; the best teachers would be found and children would be receiving a first class education despite the zip code.

The Blue Guitar: Towards a Reader Response Approach to Close Reading

In any reading for meaning activity the text matters, but so does the experience, feelings, thoughts and imagination of the reader.

"They said, 'You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.'
The man replied, 'Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.'"

                                    Wallace Stevens

In a blog entry two months ago, I defended reader response theory from what I saw as an attack from proponents of the Core Content State Standards (CCSS). In that entry I said in part, “Teachers use reader response to get students engaged in the reading so that deeper discussion of the text has a basis in student connections to the text (Walsh, 2013).” This month I have been reading a very important new book that I highly recommend to all, Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading, by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst. The first thing I noticed about the book is that it is dedicated to Louise Rosenblatt, the great literary theorist who is the creator of reader response theory.

Beers and Probst take on close reading is very different from that posited in the CCSS. They argue that a narrow focus on the “four corners of the page” as the CCSS suggest, ignores what we know about meaning making. “Meaning is created not purely and simply from the words on the page, but from the transaction with those words that takes place in the reader’s mind (Beers and Probst, p.34).” Close reading, they assert, means that we should bring the reader and the text close together. The reader matters and the text matters. As Stevens says in the poem above, we all play upon our own “blue guitar” and the creation of meaning cannot be separated from who we are.

Further, Beers and Probst are concerned that the text-dependent questions that are the cornerstone of the CCSS approach to close reading will not foster student engagement in reading. Text-dependent questions are teacher created questions. The teacher becomes the repository of knowledge and the keeper of the answers (whether from her own study or from the teacher’s guide). Students will see that reading is an exercise in guessing what is in the teacher’s head, rather than an act of grappling with text to create meaning. This is a recipe for disengagement.

In any reading for meaning activity the text matters, but so does the experience, feelings, thoughts and imagination of the reader. Each reader brings a personal “blue guitar” to the printed page. Skillful teachers use that blue guitar to foster genuine engagement and deeper understanding of text. Beers and Probst advocate a kind of close reading that honors what we have learned over the past 70 years about readers and reading.

Read to Me, Daddy

Here is a little gift for Father's Day. With all the controversy over standards, teacher evaluations and standardized tests, one thing remains incontrovertibly true: children whose parents read to them have a leg up on literacy learning.

I wrote this poem nearly thirty years ago, while on my way to a conference to speak on the topic of A Fathers' Influence on Children's Literacy Development. It, too, remains true today.

I hope you enjoy.

Read to Me, Daddy 

Read to me, Daddy

Of far away places

Where elephants reign

And turtles win races.

Read to me, Daddy

And we’ll leave on a flight

To Jupiter! Mars!

And home in one night.

Read to me, Daddy

And fill up my head

With fanciful pictures

‘Fore I go to bed.

Read to me, Daddy

Of wishes come true.

Read to me, Daddy

Then I’ll read to you.

                       Russ Walsh

There's a Giant in My Classroom is Published!

I am pleased to announce that my new book of poetry, There's a Giant in My Classroom and other poems from around school, has just been published by Infinity Press. The book is a collection of sometimes funny, sometimes silly, sometimes serious and often disgusting poems aimed at children ages 6 to 12 and the adults who know them. The poems were inspired by the real children I got to know while teaching in schools in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In the book readers will meet the bouncy Becky, who loves to hop down hallways, brainiac Marty, who always has the answer, and the kid who has the messiest desk in the history of messy desks. Anyone who has ever eaten in a school cafeteria will be able to relate to the poem, "On Friday We Get Pizza." The book is available from amazon.com and from buybooksontheweb.com. If you visit my previous post on "The Test" you can sample one of the poems from the book. I hope you enjoy.

Does Background Knowledge Matter to Reading Comprehension?

Ready for an experiment? Read and summarize the following:

Having crumbled to 214 all out, with Jonathan Trott's 84 not out the glue across an otherwise brittle English innings, the tourists were back in the contest when Paul Collingwood's brace had the hosts wobbling at 100 for five at the turn of the 21st over.

How’d it go? Chances are if you were not raised in England, India, Pakistan or Australia, you had difficulty understanding this report on a cricket match. What is the problem? Obviously, as a resident of a country where cricket is a minor sport at best, you do not have the background knowledge to comprehend a text that any 5^th grader in England would have no trouble with.

So we know that background knowledge does matter. In order to comprehend a text, we connect what we already know with what the text says. The greater the reader's background knowledge the greater the reader’s potential for comprehension and the more likely the reader will find the text interesting. I think about this as an application of  Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development.” We need to provide students with readings that are challenging, but not beyond their ability to comprehend with assistance. As I demonstrated with the cricket passage, any of us can be struggling readers if we are asked to read outside the zone.

Why do I bring this up? The authors of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) seem to be explicitly discouraging the activation and building of prior knowledge for readers.  Indeed the original version of the publisher’s guidelines for the CCSS, explicitly stated it was inappropriate to discuss student background knowledge, have students make predictions about what they would read, or provide purposes for reading a particular text. CCSS author David Coleman’s video demonstration of how to do this type of “close reading” using the Gettysburg Address redoubled the rejection of building context for reading. Coleman posits that the students should simply read the text and struggle with making sense of it.

According to Timothy Shanahan (2013), well known literacy expert, Coleman and the other authors backed off this position in a revised version of the publisher’s guidelines, but many states and school districts had already adopted these guidelines as mandates for instruction.

If indeed the authors have backed off these erroneous and misguided instructional guidelines, it is not apparent in the exemplar lesson plans they are distributing (achievethecore.org). I went to one of these exemplars developed for a seventh grade language arts class. Here are the explicit directions to the teacher of a seventh grade class that is reading Jacques soliloquy on “The Seven Ages of Man” from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

Other than giving the brief definitions offered to words students would
likely not be able to define from context (underlined in the text), avoid
giving any background context or instructional guidance at the outset of
the lesson while students are reading the text silently. This close reading
approach forces students to rely exclusively on the text instead of privileging
background knowledge and levels the playing field for all students as they
seek to comprehend Jacques’ soliloquy.

What??? “Avoid giving any background context”??? “Force students to rely exclusively on the text”??? “Levels the playing field”??? Each of these statements is absurd.

Leaving aside the appropriateness of having seventh grade students read this passage from Shakespeare (the Lexile level of the passage is 1230, which even the CCSS says is high school level reading), we are not to contextualize this text at all? Would it help the reader to know that Jacques is a character in a play? Would it help readers to know that Jacques is a melancholy, brooding philosopher auditioning to be the Duke’s fool? Would it help the reader to know that Jacques’ insight is at best clichéd and at worst just plain wrong? Does it matter that Shakespeare follows Jacques disputation on old age as “sans everything”, with the duke’s aged servant entering ready to continue faithful service? Does this context not prepare the reader to comprehend?

We should force students to rely exclusively on the text? No reader relies exclusively on any text. We are all guided by what we bring to any text, whether it is our vocabulary, our prior knowledge or the reading strategies we have developed along the way. No text stands in a vacuum, no matter how accessible or how obscure.

Finally, and most absurdly, this approach “levels the playing field?” This is an argument for ignorance is bliss. Let’s give kids texts that are impossibly difficult to read, so that they all have great difficulty reading and comprehending and then not give them any prior help so that the playing field is level. I would propose that the best way to level any reading playing field is to make sure that all students have access to the background that will help them understand and read with interest.

Let me say that I have no problem with the “close reading” concept of several readings of a text, of text dependent questions and of students writing after reading a text. These things all seem to be good educational practice. Research would also support the building and activation of prior knowledge as a key aspect of a rich comprehension of text and “close reading” is likely to be more successful if we ignore the “just have them read it” guidelines from the CCSS and do what we know works for students.

The Test

I know that many of you are in the process of giving standardized tests to the students. To lighten things up a bit, here is a poem that will appear in my new book which will be out in about a month. The title of the book will be There's a Giant in My Classroom and other poems from around school. I hope you enjoy this.

The Test

Today we take The Test.

I sit up straight in bed.

I’m trying not to be nervous,

But my body shakes with dread.

Today we take The Test.

You know the one I mean.

Where you fill in all those bubbles,

‘Cause they’re scored by a machine.

Today we take The Test.

Mom’s trying not to harass me.

She says, “Just do your best!”

She means, “Please don’t embarrass me!”

Today we take The Test.

We do it every year.

Number 2 pencils in hand,

And tongues all thick with fear.

At nine we start The Test.

Choices A, B, C or D.

A,C and D all look right,

So the answer is probably B.

Time is running out on The Test.

Now I’m really getting tense.

I’ve answered two hundred questions,

But only six made sense!

And now we turn in The Test.

And sigh with great relief.

It will be another year

Before we repeat all this grief.

Oh, Happy Day! Research Shows It's Not the Schools

Please, everyone who cares about children and education, read this article by Sean F. Reardon from today's New York Times. For those of us who have been saying that there has not been a decline in schools and schooling over the past 40 years, this is good news indeed. It appears that it is about income and how that income is spent and, oh, by the way, the quality of child care and early education that young children get.

Now, everyone who has been bashing schools and teachers for the last decade, everyone who has advocated for stealing money from the public schools through vouchers and charter schools, please redirect your energies where they will do the most good - quality child care and outstanding early childhood education.

Here is the link to the article:  http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/no-rich-child-left-behind/?ref=opinion

Defending Reader Response from the Common Core

The Common Core's "deep reading" approach to literacy and language arts is desperately needed, and will give students… the tools to be prepared for college, career, and life--tools they currently lack. I know because I see these unprepared students in my college classroom.
Prior, Karen Swallow. Why I Support the Common Corps Reading Standards. The Atlantic, April 24, 2013

Sounds great doesn’t it. The writers of the Common Core Reading Standards have provided us with the panacea. These standards will “give” our students the skills they need. Surely we want our students to be deep readers, i.e., to read beyond the surface level, to be able to deeply understand what the author is trying to convey through a thoroughgoing and thoughtful analysis. But to think that stating these goals in a document like the CCCS is going to make it happen is, to quote Janet Emig on a different topic, “to engage in magical thinking.”

Swallow is critical of the “reader response” approach to reading comprehension, as a soft approach that does not ask the students to go beyond a personal connection to the text and ends with surface understandings and miscomprehension of text. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Louise Rosenblatt’s reader response theory would know that reader response is merely a first step toward a deeper understanding of text. Teachers use reader response to get students engaged in the reading so that deeper discussion of the text has a basis in student connections to the text.

No doubt many teachers do not take students much beyond this initial understanding, but that is a flaw in instruction and not in theory. If the standards hold teachers more accountable for following up on reader response, so much the better, but let us not throw out a powerful teaching tool because we think the Common Core demands it.

In fact this is just the point. The Common Core is mute on how to achieve the “deep reading” it requires. It is left to the teachers to determine how this will happen. The Common Core will not “give” the student anything – good teaching will. And good teaching includes having students make personal connections to the text as a basis for deeper understanding.

A Long Day's Journey into Night

I hope Eugene O'Neill will forgive me for stealing the title of his great play for the title of this blog, but nothing seems more appropriate right now. At 8:03 Sunday morning I boarded the Amtrak train at the Trenton, NJ station bound for Washington, Dc. The main purpose of my journey was to take in the Folger Theater production of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew at a two o'clock matinee. It was the last day of the production and I didn't want to miss it. Since the train would get in at 10:30, I would also have some time for shopping at Eastern Market and lunch at one of the many good restaurants in the Capitol Hill area.

I settled into my comfortable seat, opened my iPad to the Sunday Times and declared myself content. At about 9:15 AM, with the train just south of Wilmington, the conductor came on the loud speaker to announce that a drawbridge over the Chesapeake was stuck open and the train would be delayed indefinitely. "Oh well," I thought. "I have plenty of time and if I can't get in the shopping I will surely make it to the play." At 11:00 PM it was announced that the bridge had been fixed, but electricity was out on the bridge and we were waiting for a diesel engine to come push us to Washington. At about 12:30, we were informed that all was repaired and we were on our way. If I am lucky, I thought, I might be able to catch a cab and make the show. I went forward to the club car and bought a sandwich and diet Pepsi (no nice lunch on this trip).

As I got back to my seat with lunch, the train lurched to a halt again. After a few minutes, a very apologetic and exasperated voice came on the PA to announce that while the bridge was fixed, our engine had broken down and we were now waiting for a new engine. "There goes my play", I thought. Also I had read the entire Sunday Times from cover to cover and was now casting about for reading material. I downloaded the Times Sunday Crossword and settled back in for the wait. The crossword proved challenging, but now I was in a real panic, my iPad was losing power and I had not packed the power cord (who would need it on a one day trip to Washington?). My biggest concern was having no reading material to entertain myself on this endless journey.

Finally about 2:30 the train started moving again and we arrived in Washington Union Station at 4:15. If I had rushed I could have made my way over to the Folger Theater to see the audience walking out of the production. Instead I went to the nearest bar and had a stiff Tanqueray on the rocks.

With the museums closing at 5 on Sunday and with my return train two hours away from leaving, I decided my trip would be confined to a visit to the Barnes and Noble in the station and dinner at one of the many restaurants. I wanted to be sure I had some reading material for the return trip with my iPad now down to 10% power.

I moseyed through the Barnes and Noble, found a magazine that looked interesting and sat down to a leisurely dinner at the Pizzeria Uno. At seven I took a seat in the waiting room, to wait for the call to board my 7:20 train home. Sure enough, at 7:15 an announcement came on that the train was delayed (I know you all saw that coming). Fortunately, this gave me time to use the last 10% of the power on my iPad to send a nasty email to Amtrak customer service. When the train still was not called by 8:00 PM, I settled back to read the recently purchased magazine. The train finally was called and left the station at 9:30 PM. I arrived in Trenton at 12:05 AM a sadder but wiser traveller, having spent nearly an entire 16 hour day sitting on or waiting for a train and I never even got to my play!

Other than giving me a chance to vent, what does all this have to do with a reading blog? Well, somewhere in the fog of my last two hours on the train, I began to wonder about what I would have done with all that time without the very special gift of reading. This may have been the longest amount of time I have had to read since I was 8 years-old and would hurry home form school to ensconce myself in bed with my latest favorite book. I learned a lot on this day, because I had time to indulge a favorite past time.

Here are a few things I learned:

There is a wonderful magazine out there called Mental Floss. I picked it up in the train station and had time to read it cover to cover. The thing I like about it as a reader is that it is full of entertaining trivia and takes a witty approach to it all. Even better as a reading teacher, I think this is just the magazine to help teachers of middle school and high school reluctant readers. It will keep them engaged and provide background information for all kinds of future learning. Check it out: mentalfloss.com

Secondly, from the New York Times Book Review section, I learned of two books that are now on my summer reading list and should be on yours too. First is Canada by Richard Ford, the newest book from one of this country's greatest contemporary writers. The second is The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, a first novel that has a baseball theme, but apparently is about so much more.

Here is some other stuff I learned along the way of my journey:

• Stan and Jan Berenstain wrote a book called How to Talk to Your Children About Sex!
• It costs zoos a million dollars in yearly rental fees paid to China in order to be allowed to exhibit Pandas.
• The "rockets red glare" that Francis Scott Key wrote of in The Star Spangled Banner were actual Congreve rockets hurled at British ships from atop 15 foot bamboo poles. Unfortunately, they were not very accurate and were as likely to destroy US ships as British ships.`
• That kids at highly competitive schools are self-medicating with the "good grade pill" Adderall. Scary.
• Words like "egg" and "bee" have three letters even though two would be sufficient for spelling and pronunciation, because the redundant additional letter makes these nouns more substantial words and distinguishes them from function words like "of" or "to."

So the next time you wonder about the importance of helping each child become a reader, think about my long day's journey and remember you are equipping them to be be their own best entertainers and learners.

Celebrate Maurice Sendak

As I am sure you have heard by now, the great children's author, Maurice Sendak died yesterday. Sendak's greatest legacy is that he did not underestimate children. He trusted his readers to understand his highly imaginative often dark works - and of course they did. I had the great pleasure of meeting Mr. Sendak thirty years ago at a conference at Rider University. Even then he was quirky. He refused to give a speech, but agreed only to be interviewed by a staff member from the University. He was, as he always was, intelligent, irascible, passionate and unforgettable.

I suggest two ways to celebrate Sendak's life: 1) read one of his books to a child and 2) view this absolutely wonderful interview with Stephen Colbert by following this link.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2012/05/maurice-sendak-notable-quotes-from-his-stephen-colbert-interview.html

The View from the Coffee Shop at Barnes and Noble

So this morning I am sitting in the Barnes and Noble coffee shop waiting for my car to be repaired. Sitting here with my decaf Americano and cinnamon scone, I can look out over the sales floor. Here are the signs I see: LEGO Architecture, Toys and Games, Trends and Collectibles, Jigsaw Puzzles, Star Wars Figures, Travel Games. I kid you not, I must strain my eyesight from here to see a book.

At the risk of sounding old and stodgy, this worries me. When people enter a book store, they should be tripping over books, not action figures. I am trying to launch a one man offensive against toys and games and gimmicks taking over space in book stores. On Easter Sunday, I gave each of my children and grandchildren a book along with their chocolate bunny. The message: "Reading is sweet."

Please help me with my campaign; go to a book store this week, buy a book and give it to a kid. Try to ignore their disappointment when they see it is not a Star Wars action figure.

The Need to Read Aloud

Recently, as I was cleaning out my office, I came across my copy of The Read Aloud Handbook, signed for me by the author, Jim Trelease. More than 30 years ago, I was doing a presentation at a reading conference in New York City. It was one of my first presentations at a large conference like this and I was quite nervous. My topic: The Role of Read Aloud in the Middle School Classroom. I had become a huge advocate of read aloud as an instructional strategy through my graduate work and through the reading of the Trelease book.

After the presentation, which I thought had gone rather well, a gentleman from the audience came up to me and said, "Hi, I'm Jim Trelease." I was floored. Jim Trelease, nationally known author and the country's biggest advocate of read aloud, was in the audience as I stole and shared many of his ideas. I think I stammered something like, "It's a pleasure to met you. I hope you liked what I had to say." In my mind I was thinking, "Oh my god, I hope I credited him appropriately."

He said kindly, "Absolutely, I think you were right on the mark. And thanks for plugging my book." He was very gracious, signed my copy of his book for me and gave me his phone number so we could stay in touch.

Over the years we ran into each other at subsequent conferences and he never failed to remember me and take a moment to talk about our work.

I bring this up now because I fear for the place of read aloud in our schools today. Only six years ago, with the encouragement of my then Superintendent, Sam Stewart, I had decreed that every student in every school in our district would be read to at least once a day. Now, I hear from many teachers that read aloud is being crowded out of the curriculum. Read aloud is an endangered species because of the creeping demands of accountability and testing. In an atmosphere where teachers feel under siege and where standardized test scores are high stakes, an apparent "soft" part of the curriculum, like read aloud, may get crowded out.

So perhaps now is a good time to revisit Jim Trelease and remind ourselves of the critical learning that results from children being read to every day.

• Read aloud conditions the brain to view reading as a pleasurable activity
• Read aloud builds background knowledge
• Read aloud builds vocabulary
• Read aloud provides a fluent reading model for children

The most skilled teacher would be hard pressed to design an activity that has that much bang for the buck. When an administrator asks you your goals for read aloud, recite the list above. Fight for the right to read aloud to your students. We must read to our students every day. To fail to do so is educational malpractice.