The prompt
I remember being asked a simple, but insightful question by an ERO reviewer1
“What are you trying to do in English? Teach reading or develop readers? They’re not the same thing.”2
A link
An extended thought
Much is made of the importance of ‘reading miles’. And just like anything believed to promote learning, adults feel like they have to be in control of it for it to work.3 The same twisting of intent is found in the 10,000 hours to mastery idea popularised by Malcolm Gladwell4, which has been seized on by sports clubs and academies to justify putting kids through hours of practice under the tutelage of adults.
It’s a nonsense. The best players clock up endless hours of practice, but the bulk of them are in the backyard, not under the watchful eye of a coach.
I’ve seen heaps of kids spat out of those contexts by the relentless pursuit of performance on someone else’s terms. Even worse, they stop practicing in the backyard.
“The advancement of reading comprehension skills and development of vocabulary are directly tied to the work readers do during independent reading.”
I think if you want to develop readers, you’re better off
creating conditions that feel like reading ‘backyards’, and
finding opportunities to sprinkle in some reading ‘coaching’ as the time allows,
than you are in
obsessing over planning out numerous reading group sessions, and
trying to find time to squeeze in the occasional 10 minute ‘silent reading’ time (we all know how that tends to go).
School’s haven’t often seen ERO visitors as people with wisdom to impart, so this question struck me as especially insightful ;) It also helped to clarify my thinking about the pedagogical shift I was grappling with at the time, where ideas about the place of wonder and joy were smashing up against the domination of assessment and all the distorting demands it makes regarding teaching practice. Basically, it helped me be braver.
I think that teaching reading is the main focus of schools. Perhaps it’s because the distinction between the two hasn’t been thought of enough, or maybe it’s because it’s much harder to measure the development of readers.
Perhaps I’m slightly overplaying this, but the premise that underlies it is true: most schools don’t trust kids enough, and as a result kids spend most of their time at school under active supervision.