Review Reading #1 'The Reading Zone' - Nancie Atwell

Each year several scholarships are awarded to NSW teachers who wish to embark on a study tour to collect resources, conduct interviews, create resources to ultimately enhance their pedagogical approaches and those of their colleagues. I applied for the Premier's English Teachers' Association English Scholarship in 2016 and whilst I didn't win, I thoroughly enjoyed the application process - reading, writing, and reflecting on the ways in which I teach writing and reading. In preparing, I contacted several schools to possibly arrange visits and I also applied for an Internship at the Center for Teaching and Learning. 

I was lucky enough to be accepted into the Internship program at the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) in Edgecome, Maine. One aspect of my proposed study tour included the internship to further my understanding of Nancie Atwell's approaches at the Center for Teaching and Learning, the demonstration school she established in 1990.

Flying to America to to partake in an internship is not something one can usually just do but it just so happened that my partner and I were planning to go to America for a belated honeymoon. We had been putting it off (for nearly three years) - saving a bit more, waiting for a better time, etc. Sometimes you just need a bit of an incentive to get organised and the Internship was it! So work and touristing have combined into our 2017 trip! We will be visiting a range of places before I visit CTL for four days in April before we fly back home.

To prepare for the Internship I have been assigned some readings. I am going to tackle these as well as my preparations for next year - a unit of work to write, Faculty Handbook to collate, Scope and Sequence to update, etc. over the next month before school begins for 2017.

I have been reading Atwell's work for a few years now after I was directed to her texts by Professor Wayne Sawyer from Western Sydney University. He sent me some initial chapters from the first edition of 'In the Middle' published by Heinemann in 1987 and then I went hunting for all of her texts. I was overjoyed when a new edition of 'In the Middle' was published in 2015 - how serendipitous! After engaging with the work of Nancie Atwell I am reminded of what a driven person she must be - she is a prolific writer, reader, and you know, has her own school. Amazing.

Review Reading #1 The Reading Zone - Nancie Atwell

ISBN: 978-0-439-92644-7

ISBN-10: 0-439-92644-0

Publisher: Scholastic Teaching Resources

Publication Date: November 7th, 2007

Stockists

Sample Pages

I am going to respond to the texts by writing a 'Letter-Essay' - a technique students at CTL utilise to reflect on the texts they have read. This is the letter provided for students to guide them when writing their own letter-essays. Students receive a copy of this letter to stick into their workbook.

Dear Reader,

I have just finished reading Nancie Atwell's The Reading Zone. This text explains what constitutes the 'reading zone' and a range of methods and strategies to assist students to reach this place in their own reading. I felt an immediate magnetism to the idea of the 'reading zone' because I have always loved reading and I have the propensity to get so caught up in a story that I simply must continue to find out what is going to happen next. I love the anticipation of continuing reading a text and the feeling when dipping back into a book to see what the characters are up to - will they solve the problem? Will there be an explanation? Will they find the inner strength to overcome an obstacle? The thrill is almost addictive and it is why I have sometimes have trouble choosing books because I do not want to waste my valuable reading time. I want to be immersed in a world and drawn immediately into a story so I am back in the 'reading zone.' So, is it any wonder that I am deeply saddened when my students loudly proclaim - 'I hate reading' and 'I don't read' like it is a feat? Atwell's book gave me some practical strategies to utilise to assist students with their reading to ensure that they too can develop the habits of a reader and experience the joy that accompanies the 'reading zone.'

Atwell writes in a very honest and straight forward manner with references to both research and anecdotes from her time in the classroom. She effectively details the practices and approaches at CTL whilst reinforcing the school's vision and the humility of staff/student interactions. The underlying element to each successful strategy is exactly that humility, the staff member who cares about and knows their students. The conferences between pupils and their teacher are evidence of adults who put the time into knowing what it is that each student needs. I love the reinforcement of this throughout The Reading Zone and all of Atwell's texts. Schools are places made up of people helping other people.

I often get asked about what 'work' students do with our reading program at school what students do once they have finished reading? The Reading Zone outlines an effective way for students to respond to texts using a 'letter-essay' to their teacher or peer. This accompanies regular reading conferences to determine where students are up to with their reading and whether they are reading texts that are too hard, too easy, or 'just right'. The letter-essay gives students a chance to write an in-depth response to a text that they have read. This text is not something assigned by a teacher or on a prescribed reading list but it is a novel chosen by the student after listening to 'Book Talks' and having conferences with their teacher who knows a range of texts to recommend to readers. There are no chapter questions, reports on every single text a student reads but a considered response to a text a student feels strongly about – either positively or negatively!

The Reading Zone provides an excellent overview of the way that the reading workshop at CTL runs and whilst it is filled with success stories, it provides honest ways to work through issues to provide structures to help students who aren't regular readers and ways to give all students an opportunity to experience the reading zone. 

The things I totally loved about The Reading Zone are:

THE IDEAS AND STEP BY STEP PROCESSES:

• Students complete 30-minutes of reading every night for homework.
• CTL works with parents to ensure students are successful as readers. A letter goes home at the start of the year and parents are sent a letter if students are not partaking in their reading. After the third contact a meeting is arranged to discuss reading (as it is so important to student success!).
• Students are given choice of reading material in reading workshop.
• Reading voraciously and reading quality texts supports the development of comprehension skills so comprehension strategies are taught in Mini-lessons - to individuals, small groups, or the class when and if there is a problem. 
• Teachers conduct quick conferences to determine whether texts suit students' ability and to ensure they are not holding onto a text they should have ditched. They also record pages read to ensure HW is completed.
• ‘Someday’ titles – after listening to a Book Talk by a teacher or peer students are encouraged to write the title down if it is something they think they may enjoy.

QUOTES AND ANECDOTES:

I love the way CTL operates and the way students are exposed to a rich and worthy curriculum that builds their autonomy and abilities as critical consumers of texts as well as effective composers. The quotes Atwell disperses through her prose just sing to those wanting to try something different:

• ‘The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you’ – William Dean Howells.
• ‘Children learn to read only by reading. Therefore, the only way to facilitate their learning to red is to make reading easy for them’ – Frank Smith
• The personal anecdotes like, ‘I’m being realistic. I cannot read all the literature and also edit all the writing and plan all the lessons, write all the evaluations, attend all the meetings, and teach history, too. But I can become intimate enough with young adult literature to connect particular readers with the particular books they crave. Intimacy with my kids’ books has become the goal.’

I loved this text for an overview of what Atwell does and if you are interested in the ideas I recommend that you jump into In the Middle: A Lifetime of Learning about Writing, Reading, and Adolescents

Yours truly,

K

FutureLearn - Start Writing Fiction

Several years ago, I came across a site called 'FutureLearn' where you can enrol and partake in free online courses (FREE!). I searched through and found some on literature and writing and I enrolled. I didn't end up completing the courses at the time but I recently enrolled in another and realised, because they are all online, they wait for you! I am working through 'Start Writing Fiction' now, which is designed to get you writing.  So I am collecting activities to use with my creative writing group at school (smart preparation!) and hopefully also improving my writing in the process!

Activity 8. Imagining Writing Spaces

Ideal

The night owl sat, a blanket around her knees. She wished she was a little smaller so the blanket would ‘throw’ over more of her but it didn’t matter really. Maths, year 10, maybe year 11. ‘When studying, have everything you need right there, everything. Water, tissues, pens, highlighters, paper, your textbook, a blanket if it is cold. Don’t make any excuses to get up.’ She wondered if the sage advice helped or hindered her writing process as now she felt compelled to get up about 7-8 times to collect every single item that may be needed in some bizarre scenario. A pile of equipment surrounded her as she peeled open her laptop and opened up her ‘Ideas’ folder. ‘Ideas’? This was only so her students didn’t question her file names when she used her laptop for her lessons during the day, ‘Misssss, what is in your ‘My writing’ folder? Can we read yours before we do ours? Pleeaaaaasssseee Missss.’ Ideas. It was easier. She tied her hair back and found the document she was after. The night was a vignette around her, the cold leeched through the window at her side but she liked intermittently looking out to the glassy streets outside, pondering whether anyone else was awake as she wrote.

Bizarre

She hit the ‘OK’ button on her phone, again. How many alarms were set this morning? Five? Six? She simply couldn’t get herself out of bed a moment before she had to. She read 7.17am. Ahhhh, 19 more blissful minutes. 7.36am gave her 20 minutes to be ready and out the door to be at work by 8.01am. She sucked in a quick breath and sat up suddenly. Oh! Writing. She hadn’t been thinking of ‘the year of making her dreams a reality’ when she was hitting that damn snooze button. A wave a guilt spread over her, sweat prickled at her hairline. It was a New Year’s Resolution to get herself out of bed to write before her day begun. What a start.

Activity 2. Keep Track of Useful Details

He sat, glancing at the pages. I caught myself. I was looking at him like I would gaze at a creature in a zoo. Behind the glass absorbed in his own world, a shopping bag sat in front of him and he read. Page after page. I noticed illustrations on some of the pages, a bright splash of colour. The corners of his mouth twitched with a smile. Did his neck hurt from leaning over like that?

The bread was soft in her hands. She was looking forward to finishing the sandwich so she could put the rubbish in the unused packet. Public spaces. She needed to attend to her work in a place away from home but there was something unsettling that invoked slight nausea about sitting where others sat. She wished for a place only she had sat, clean, well lit, with a storm outside. The ideal conditions for peace, for clarity, for focus and motivation. The most distracted person in the world. Was there something wrong with her? Probably. But what could she do? She could only visit the public spaces, ignore the turn of her stomach as she ate her lunch and try to find her groove so she could get it all done.

I stood next to her, trawling the shelves for the latest issue. C’mon, it had to be here, I could hardly wait to read the next volume… the gigantic robot, did the small boy bot really create the monster that destroyed the world? A sudden movement caught my eye, her focused scrolling through pages her smart phone. I saw the familiar orange on the screen. She was looking for a cheaper version of the text in front of her. Wow… I thought I was the only one that did this. My rule was, half, half. Purchase half online and half in store – regardless of the price. Look after the book store and look after my pocket.

Burbury scarf, a well-tailored coat, thick Gucci glasses over her eyes. Skin clear, almost translucent, her hair a tumbling, layered cut swept across her forehead. Her shoes were suede, and clean, with laces that fell neatly each side of the bow. There was no bag by her feet, no matching luggage typical of those waiting to board as ‘Business Class’ or as I liked to think of them as ‘People Wasting Money that Could be Spent on Books’. Instead, she held a cheap, purple sleeping bag. A string of plastic, sans the cardboard tag, stuck out at the top near her hand and she tugged at the gently and repeatedly.

It was time, time to move to the next stage of the plan. Time to ditch the enormous purple (they told me it was blue and it bloody wasn’t) puffer jacket surrounding my being. I cannot fathom how ridiculous I must look but it didn’t matter one iota if this all worked out. If it didn’t, well, I was the lunatic sitting in the station for several hours doing my best Barney the Dinosaur impression.

He held his phone up to his mouth to speak and then moved it back to his ear to listen. Blerrrgggghhhh! Why! Why not hold it to your ear like a regular person? Seriously! Imagine conversing with that, ‘One second, just need to move the phone to my mouth to speak and then don’t answer straight away as I need to hover the phone around my ear in order to hear your response.’ What a dick. I can imagine the response…’cancer causing, brain cancer… blah blah blah.’ Yeah, the phone that you hold in your hand, made of flesh, that you dial with your finger, made of flesh, then you put it in your pocket, either near your heart muscle or your kidneys, or your reproductive organs. Give it up. The strange Voodoo of the modern world invoked a secret rage.

Activity 1. Fact and Fiction

Paragraph 1 One fact and three fictitious elements.

The rain fell in sheets, backlit by stark white. Surfmist. It reminded me of the colour we chose for our window frames, the garage door. We were young then, just 22 and 23, too young to enter into such a commitment. We should have been out exploring the world, not building a house and learning to despise and resent each other in the process.

Paragraph 2 One fictitious element and three facts.

She sighed, grief wrenched her usual smile into a tight grimace. Her lips were bare, there was no trace of her daily ritual of carefully applied lip liner and the garish red of the ‘Volatile’ colour she so loved. He shirt fell over her shoulder revealing the stretched elastic of a singlet that she should have thrown away years ago. The small, furry creature was limp in her lap as she stroked its soft, grey fur.

I kept trying to reach for something vaguely real when writing the fictitious elements in my paragraphs and it was such easier to write 'facts' and the context surrounding them because I was drawing on my own experiences. Perhaps a lack of imagination or that I reinforce fictitious elements with something tangible to make them seem more realistic.