What? Your Students Are Reading Their Textbooks?!

An interesting discussion has been taking place on one of the listservs I belong to, focusing on what we can do to encourage students both to read their textbooks and to make sense of what they read.  Below are a few of the suggestions.

• Try “JITTs” (Just-in-Time Teaching), an approach that involves asking deep questions or questions that you think will be hard for students to answer and ending with something like “What did you find especially puzzling or especially interesting in the reading?”  Student answers are graded (to encourage participation) and turned in before class, so that the teacher knows what to focus on in class  (Bill Goffe, Penn State University)
• Don’t like JITTS?  Try SPUNKI, which stands for questions asking what was Surprising, Puzzling, Useful, New, Knew it already,  and Interesting.  Rebecca Clemente (North Central College) has students use a rubric that involves them finishing sentences like ““When the article stated … this was surprising because …“  Then they talk over their responses in groups at the beginning of class to set the focus for the discussion to follow.
• Another way to stimulate motivation for reading recommended by Jen Lara is going through an upcoming assignment, writing important quotes down on individual note cards, and having all students at the beginning of class pick a quote that is of interest to them and then discuss it with a partner. 
• A variation of this was suggested by Jill Dahlman (University of Nevada, Reno ): “I am going to ask people to note on a piece of paper (no name!) where they had difficulty and a list of words that they didn't fully understand and turn these in. I'm going to start our discussion with going through those areas of difficulty, and then see if any of these areas spark a discussion. Reading academic language is difficult, and the more students can see that it's ‘not just them,’ then I think more people will become engaged.”
• A number of listserv members recommended online discussions as a good way to motivate students to read and clarify reading assignments.  Charles MacArthur (University of Delaware) pointed out that “one good angle for questions is about the value or meaning of the reading for students' own lives. How would you use this? How is it related to your experience?”
• Lynda Harding (CSU Fresno) assigns students to online discussion groups and gives them some credit for posting a question and some for answering a colleague’s question or for helping to select one or two questions for the group to submit to her.
• Jon Mueller (North Central College) has students write just a couple sentences about two or three questions he poses on the reading assignment.  Credit is given not for accuracy but just if the student has made a good-faith effort, so it only takes 5 -10 minutes to assign credit to a stack of papers.  He added, “I was initially surprised that virtually all of my students, including the weaker and less motivated ones, complete almost all of the assignments. They are much better prepared for class.”
• Lee Torda (Bridgewater State University) has a different approach, a “top 5 document”:  “One page. Single spaced. Top Five Things You Think Are Important for Other People to Get from this Reading. It's a living document in class. Students read each others'. They battle over their choices in a friendly way. They write back and forth about it so I don't really do a ton of evaluation of it. Mostly if they do it and it's not absolutely wrong and phony, they get the credit. And it's 15% of their final grade.”
• And finally Irv Peckham (Drexel) reminded everyone of the importance of giving reading assignments that students will enjoy reading, that they can feel connected to, since, as he put it, “Reading and writing should be a pleasure for students.”

Have you used any of these?  Did they work?  Do you have tips to add to the list? 

Using Groups to Introduce Black History and Reading in the Classroom

Guest Blogger:  Jean Waites-Howard

Last fall I taught Social Policy.  I always want to introduce relevant Black Historical events that impact on Social Policy. I had recently learned about The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. This is a very long text which chronicles the Great Migration from the South to the North from 1915 to 1970. The book focuses on the adventures and trials of three migrants: Ida Mae Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster.  The book includes individuals and families seeking a “better life,” as well as those who played a major role in the transformation of America’s landscape. I really wanted the students to have an opportunity to read this well-documented, informative report of our history.

My Social Policy class was very large (37 students). I divided them into six groups. I divided the text into six sections. Each group was to read their section and respond to seven questions about the text. The students had to prepare PowerPoints for their group presentation and a two-page summary.

The student presentations were excellent. The students shared equally in the presentations. They worked together and really covered their assigned material. Several students encouraged me to use this book again for this course. Leaving the “Jim Crow South” and confronting racism in Chicago was eye opening for our students.

For instance, Ida Mae Gladney had attended a neighborhood watch meeting in Chicago where she had the opportunity to hear a young state senator named Barack Obama.  That led to the question of what the impact of the Great Migration was on Obama’s presidency. The students could connect this history with current events, as they could the fact that “the first black mayors in each of the major receiving cities of the North and the West were not longtime native blacks but participants of sons of the Great Migration.” (p. 529, The Warmth of Other Suns)

Group projects can reinforce learning and build our students’ skills. This is a creative manner to introduce important subject matter.

The Millenial Reading Games

Guest Blogger:  Jamila Cupid

Every semester, I have at least one student ask how to become a better writer.  Once in a while I also get inquiries regarding how to grow one’s vocabulary and how to get better at copy editing.  Every semester, I reiterate to students the best way to improve these skills is to read, read, and read some more.  Yet, a couple of classes into the semester, I walk into a room full of pupils who have not cracked open the textbook, reviewed any of supplemental material and certainly have not done any independent reading on related topics.  Many of them even reveal limited knowledge of current events plastered across print and online newspapers.  The question that haunts me with each class prep, the question that seeps into my dreams at night, is “How do educators get students to not just read, but want to read?”    

I reached out to colleagues and mentors to find out what techniques they use to convince students to read.  The method that ranked number one was quizzing students after each chapter.  Some said they administer quizzes in class, but many now set up timed exams online for the students to take prior to class.  Other methods at the top of the list were assigning reaction papers and small group presentations.  Others said they always lead the lecture with questions related to the reading.  These are all terrific ideas, tried and true.  The only problem was that I had already implemented most of these tactics in classes.  It seemed that over time their effectiveness had been waning as some newer students did not mind accepting an assignment, quiz or class participation grade of zero for the day and were not the least bit embarrassed about being unprepared for class discussions.  What a conundrum!

Well then, imagine my surprise when I came across the 2012 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Review that claims Millennials (Generation Y) passed Baby Boomers in book purchasing in 2011 (Bowker.com).  This statistic raised a gaggle of questions in my mind.  What kinds of books are they buying?  Are they actually reading the books?  What are they reading?  Where are they reading it?  Do these books serve more of a decorative purpose, like a coffee table prop or a new age tea cup coaster?  I imagined these books stacked into pedestals holding up iPads and smartphones in positions of reverence.  Then I came across further findings which revealed that many Millennial book purchases are across digital spaces and they are ushering in the digital shift for the book industry.  The stacks of books toppled, making way for the expansion of e-book and audio book applications on the shiny mobile devices. 

Perhaps, the copious notes, reaction papers, quizzes, and printed textbooks are on their way to obsolescence.  For now, many of us still find them somewhat effective.  Thus, we may not need to abandon traditional methods, but it may be time for us to transition in more than a few reading assignments that are broken into shorter segments on digital platforms in audio formats followed by fireworks.  (I’m just joking about the fireworks …unless it works.)  Additionally, classroom flipping – the method in which homework and activities occur in class while lectures and PowerPoint presentations are administered online outside of class time – may be a missing link in our curricula.  With its flexible nature, classroom flipping could advance traditional teaching methods to accommodate the brains of the “digital natives” we are now charged with training.  The only way to find out is to give it a whirl.  So I find myself compartmentalizing the reading assignments and relating them to topics the students can’t stop chatting about, then extending the conversation to topics beyond their daily scope and comfort zone.  I am considering full flipping options through the correct university channels and processes for upcoming semesters.  Until then, more class time is now dedicated to increasing class activities that get students engaged and even catapult the higher performing students into leadership roles amongst their peers.  Also, more of the real world is physically brought into the classroom with every opportunity that arises.  Much of it works, some of it does not, but the process is ongoing and more of my students are opening their book (apps).   There is still, and always will be, tons of room for growth.  So please share the things you do to get students to read, think critically, and engage.   

A Luddite Defense of the Book

Guest Blogger: Steve McCullough

In the history department, we believe one of our missions is to prepare our majors for either law school or graduate school. While I cannot speak of what it takes to succeed in law school, as someone who earned his doctorate in 2007, I feel I am qualified to speak how we can help our students thrive in graduate school. And for me, the answer is more reading.

One of the shocks many first year graduate school students face is the amount of reading they are expected to do on a weekly basis. In history, learning historiography, the essential literature, is just as important as research skills. By the time a grad student reaches his/her comprehensive exam, they are expected to have read or have knowledge on an estimated 300 books.

So can we help out graduates excel in their further studies? I am firmly convinced that one way is to have a reading load of at least three books, excluding textbooks, in almost all history undergraduate classes. While weekly reading of primary source materials is a key ingredient of helping students place historical events into context, we also need to challenge them by assigning monograph length works that examine important topics or people.

When I took my first history class as a freshman at New Mexico State University in 1988, among the books I was assigned was Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972. At the time the names of George McGovern and Richard Nixon only brought vague recollections of political discussions in my house long ago. Thompson made me realize that the 1972 was one of the most exciting in recent history, even though at the end, he admitted McGovern supporters deluded themselves in thinking he was electable. I realized then that I wanted to spend my life exploring the past.

I realize how in today’s world reading books seems passé, perhaps even obsolete. Students are reading less and less in K-12 as teaching to the standardized tests has gripped schools. Students come into college able to take multiple choice tests, but have little or no experience in reading monograph length works. To me, the lack of historical knowledge is something easily fixable by taking classes. The hard part is teaching critical thinking, including the ability to read a book and offer informed analysis.

To that end, in each of my classes, students are expected to read three books and then write a critical thinking paper based on books of topics I want my students to learn greater knowledge of then I could offer in lecture. For my U.S. History to 1865 class, I used Gordon Wood’s The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin to illustrate how the American colonists in the 18th century went from considering themselves loyal British subjects to creating a new national identity as Americans. I next assigned Peter Kolchin’s American Slavery: 1619-1877 to more fully explore not only how slavery changed from colonial to the antebellum period, but to also discover the world the slaves made. Finally, I used James McPherson’s For Cause and Comrade: Why Men Fought in the Civil War to offer a glimpse into the world of Civil War soldiers. For most classes I assign at least one book on war because of how removed we are as a society from war with the end of the draft in the 1970s and the creation of a volunteer armed forces. I often fear that students only understanding of war comes from popular video games such as Medal of Honor or Call of Duty.

As I end this blog post, I realize I use only anecdotal evidence to make my case. I can offer no research or evidence to support my argument other then personal experiences. But I firmly believe that to help out students succeed in the next stage of their education when they leave Lincoln University, we must prepare them for the rigors of graduate and law schools. And even if our graduates chose not to pursue further degrees, it is vital that we help create not only well informed citizens, but well read ones as well.

Do We Share our Passion for Reading?

Guest Blogger: Joanne DeBoy

Reading is a subject and a process that reaches all levels of the education world and is a topic of discussion by students, parents, teachers, professors and politicians. It has been used as a political football in terms of funding; Should schools/programs receive funding for their poor reading performance? Should schools receive incentives monies for exceptional reading performance as measured on a standardized test? Debates ensue as to which strategy should be used to improve reading performance by those in the field and well as by those without formal education in the psychology of reading (the process). Some questions that confront the reading field today are:

• What is meant by “proficient” reading performance?
• Do standardized tests deliver what they purport to deliver?
• How can we obtain the critical reading performance levels of 53.2 million K-12 students in a cost-efficient manner?
• How does critical thinking relate to reading comprehension? Can critical thinking be taught?
• Which instructional approach is more beneficial: top-down or bottom-up?
• How and to what extent does decoding and phonemic awareness relate to reading performance?
• How has the view of reading instruction changed with the increased use of technology?
• Given the wide range of available electronic information, will books be essential in the future?
• Will email, texting, etc. undermine or enhance writing/reading proficiency?

Despite the many discussions regarding the above topics and many more issues, the numbers of students in the United States who are avid and enthusiastic readers is shockingly small (Guthrie, McGough, Bennett & Rice, 1996). Research suggests that even those who have the cognitive ability to read choose not to read; thus, they have been dubbed “alliterate”.

Reading instructional programs designed to improve students’ performance have been in the K-12th grade curriculum since the establishment of normal schools (teacher preparation programs) and has been in the media recently, courtesy of the federally-funded No Child Left Behind mandate. However, the reading instruction issue does not stop at the basic education level; both community colleges and 4 year colleges and universities have recognized the need for reading support and instruction for college students for some 35 years. This, too, has engendered heated discussion at many levels.

Four years ago, Lincoln University’s Board of Trustees, administrators and many faculty members identified the need to require our students to read beyond assigned textbooks. For that reason we have been creating a reading list of books that students should read. It should be noted that Lincoln University is not alone in providing a reading list of extra-curricular books with content to which our college students should be exposed.

However, I am recommending an additional step to enhance a love of reading based upon research by Applegate and Applegate (2004) that connected the teaching of reading (or any other subject) to the Peter Effect. The subjects in the research were pre-service teachers, many of whom mirrored the reading behaviors of many college students: they have the cognitive ability to read but choose not to do so. The authors identified the problem in somewhat biblical terms, recalling the story of Apostle Peter who, when asked for money by a beggar replied that he could not give what he did not have (Acts 3:5). The research finding was disheartening; many pre-service teachers do not have a love of reading to pass on to students. How can teachers/ professors give what they do not have—a love or passion for reading, learning or specific content? How can we share the feelings, the insights, the connections and relevancy that we receive through the written word if we don’t possess it ourselves? We must share that love of reading that we feel when we reflect on those books that resonated with us, touched our souls and remained a part of our very being. Those are the books, ideas, topics, essays that we need to share with our students so that they might become afire with a love of reading/learning.

A book that was recommended by the Biology Department for the Lincoln University Reading List, still being developed, was “The Double Helix” by Watson and Crick (1951). I was moved to remembering the pictures I had in my head in my earlier college years when I was given the assignment to read that book. I can still visualize the two graduate student researchers in the early years of their careers doing their work and discussing their ideas about DNA in that small cluttered room. I don’t remember if the book was assigned for Biology, Microbiology or the Physiology of Behavior but I do remember connecting to those graduate students doing their research as I read that book.

There are reading skills and strategies that can be taught to students to help with their reading comprehension. However, most college professors have not had formal instruction regarding the reading process, reading skills or strategies. What all educators should model to our students is our love/passion for reading and learning and what we have experienced through the written word.