Learning to Read Should Never Hurt - Take the Frustration Out of Learning to Read!

We do not need to “sell” books and reading to children. They already love them.  We just need to make sure we don’t diminish their natural joy. Children do not automatically stop loving books as they get older….  we destroy the joy of reading by frustrating them.

And because we are always learning to read - it is so important to take the frustration out of reading. Based on the book The Power of Joyful Reading: Help Your Young Readers Soar to Success (Litwin & Pepin, 2020). This episode shares examples of how to help your children and students love books, love reading, and see themselves as readers!

See more at www.ginapepin.com!

Transcript

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Welcome to the Let's Talk Teacher to Teacher podcast. My name is Dr. Gina Pepin. I'm so happy to meet you. I'm a Midwestern mom of three and a super enthusiastic reading professor and a busy reading specialist at a wonderful elementary school. I was the 2018-2019 Upper Michigan Teacher of the Year and I really enjoy mentoring teachers of all levels. I have a great passion for early literacy. I'm co-author, along with the extremely talented children's author Eric Litwin, of The Power of Joyful Reading, Help Your Young Reader Sorted Success. Each week I offer you practical make and takes, easy tips along with real life shared stories so that you can easily create joyful shared reading experiences in your own classroom, daycare centers, and homes right away. I am here to help you make powerful changes. Let's do this together. This podcast today is about how learning to read should never hurt. How you can take the frustration out of learning to read. First of all, let's start with a question. How do we get children to fall in love with books? Well, we don't have to. Because they already do. Look at how babies so naturally clutch them. Look at how toddlers gravitate towards them and listen how they beg for a bedtime story. We know that kids kindergartners and early elementary children also truly love books. Their enthusiasm for reading and being read to is heartwarming. We do not need to sell books and reading to our children because they really do, they already love them. We just need to make sure that we don't diminish their natural joy. Children do not automatically stop loving books as they get older. We destroy the joy of reading by freeing So let's talk a little bit more about this. There are a lot of universal programs and practices out there that are used, but they do not meet the needs of all of our children. School districts that our children attended, there was a reading program that had the children independently practice and they would do repeated readings. And often it was a silent practice. Then they were expected to take a test on it. And the test was about five questions deep. The questions were not higher order thinking questions. They did not include the depth of knowledge, Bloom's taxonomy, and those types of things. And there were often even limited responses. One of my own daughters who had a 504 plan for anxiety, this was really tough for her because finding books that she could test on as a middle schooler became one of the most frustrating and difficult tasks for her. And I'm so thankful to say that it didn't diminish her drive and love of reading. She was an excellent reader. she could read things very very well but with a child with anxiety the content was really really really really tough some of those things were a little bit deeper and darker than she really wanted to read about especially books in at the middle school that early teen area of literature so back in elementary school we even had trouble with her with reading mystery books and other books because they were just too scary and they made her just too nervous and made her think about things a little bit deeper than we needed her to and she just needed kind of, in a sense, those easy reads. Not in the sense of text complexity or word choice and structure, but really more so in the sense of trauma and or even drama that the book would include. These types of books were very, very hard to find. This is one of the practices amongst so many others that we often tend to see children then start to fall away from that true love of books and that desire to read independently. When we provide our students with an abundance of joyful and engaging shared reading experiences and we give them access to high interest books, we lead them to truly love books. We lead them to enjoy reading and even see themselves as readers. Most importantly, we set them up for success. It's really that simple. It's so important that all of our children love books, enjoy reading, and see themselves as readers. Reading and even reading instruction can be deeply frustrating for some of our students and it truly breaks our hearts. But frustration should never be the defining experience. We need to be sure that every moment of reading frustration is met with an overwhelmingly joyful and engaging reading experience. This will help all our students fall in love with books and reading. It will help them stay motivated and even even resilient through important but sometimes difficult moments in our reading instruction. Keep in mind that reading, even more so learning to read, should never be a no pain, no gain scenario. But this is not the case for learning to read. Sometimes we see this in our classrooms and we see this in families. There is a distinct difference between if you really want something bad enough, you're going to have to work hard to get it type of frustration and learning to read and working hard at something and learning how to enjoy the benefits of learning it. Keep in mind that even if a student develops strong reading skills, it does not guarantee that they will be able to deal with more sophisticated text and that text's meaning later on in such areas as secondary science, history, and math. Even more importantly, students at the secondary level are still learning to read. Think about that. We all know that practice for any desired skill is super important, but there are so many different ways to practice. We really, really, really need to look and listen and adapt opportunities for our students based on their needs and their interests so that the level of frustration does not lead to the point where we have then destroyed their joy of reading. Don't some uncomfortableness there's going to be a sense of a challenge because this is when true learning happens there's a common saying we share often in our home and our schools and when you move out of your comfort zone this is when learning truly happens now think about that in terms of reading learning to read at any age any age level can be exactly this but folks please remember it should never ever Many of our students are coming to us with heavy hearts already filled with trauma, scary experiences, family issues, and social, emotional, and mental health needs. It is okay to help them build that stamina, that endurance, through mistakes and discomfort. This may or may not happen through bumps in the road. But here's the bottom line. Our students must feel more reading joy than reading frustration because if they don't later in life they will likely no longer love books or reading. I've seen this happen too many times and I bet you have too. Let's dive a little bit further into how to lead our students to see themselves as readers. Leading our students to see themselves as readers is relatively simple and it's very enjoyable. It is such a very precious moment and it can be done at any age level. Remember, we are always learning and developing our reading identities. Here is how it works. It begins with abundant, joyful, and engaging shared reading experiences between a child or a student and one or more cherished caregivers or teachers. They are immersed in shared reading experiences throughout the day, day after day, year after year. These experiences are deeply human and wonderfully intertwined. active. Did you know reading for young children is a deeply human experience and in most cases they do not want to read alone. They want to read to you. Let me share an example with you. The process of rereading a favorite predictable book over and over with focus and joy is incredibly beneficial to most of our children and it's also necessary for them to become readers. It's a crucial part of forming their reading foundation The incredible things that it does for their brains are well worth the wear and tear on books. So think of what they are learning. They get daily and engaging practices in phonological awareness, oral fluency, vocabulary, and even print awareness. They are internalizing the book completely. How powerful is that? Interestingly, this process can be totally misunderstood by very well-intended parents and teachers. Once a child has memorized a book, they can often downplay and dismiss the educational importance of independent, predictive reading experiences that lead up to that total accomplishment. It's astonishing how many times I have actually seen this happen. They say the child is just simply memorizing the book. And as Eric notes in our book, he's just not, no one's really sure how to respond to that. If you think that the child says, down one night to cram in the book, like information for a test that they don't care about, that this was really what led to that memorization of that book. There's no way this is possible. Not at all. They have been joyfully immersed in and finding meaning in a beloved book that they've been reading over and over and over again. They will not forget what they have memorized, like information for a meaningless test. No way. They will remember every single word, every expression, and they are powerless building their reading foundation and even their own identity. The problem is that word memorization often has a really negative connotation. And as adults, we generally memorize things we don't care about. And we do. We often soon forget them. But there is nothing negative about a young child memorizing a beloved book. In fact, it is completely positive. It's wonderful and it can even be life-changing. And most importantly, because they are beginning to see themselves as readers. Just look at them, listen to them, read that book to you. So now let's talk about how to make our secondary classrooms look and feel like elementary classrooms. Because students at this level also deserve to fall in love with reading, love books, and see themselves as readers just as much. I remember a course that I was teaching a of the discussion forums, one of the students had posted a quote or a scenario where there was a comparison between preparation and products, you know, the posters, the decorations, all of those things in secondary and elementary classrooms. The post pointed out how much is lost between elementary and secondary classrooms, and somehow it has become an assumption that secondary classrooms no longer need those visual supports, those beautiful, bright, vibrant colored posters, the supplemental materials, etc. I want you to think about that for a moment. Why wouldn't a high school social studies classroom benefit from a word wall or an interactive word study bulletin board or those bright, beautiful, joyful, happy colors? Let me give you another example. Let's talk about this in relationship to the power of print. Let's talk about the power that there really is in print and take the concepts from in our book what we call precious print and let's apply them to secondary classrooms. This is where we discuss infusing your classroom with precious print. We all know there's a lot of research that supports the importance of surrounding our students in print rich learning environments and this is motivating and it's exciting and it helps all of our children become better readers and that is why in our book Eric and I refer to the as precious print. But why does this stop at the elementary level? Let's talk a little bit more about this. In our book, we list guidelines for infusing precious prints, and we also talk about fun and effective ways to fill your classroom with precious print. Let's dive into this a little bit further and talk about it together. Some of the guidelines for infusing precious print into a classroom include things like make sure a wide variety of print and reading materials is available. Intentionally use print throughout the classroom. Whatever you display should have a very clear purpose. And talk with students about that print and the reading materials that are available throughout the classroom. Help them to become really familiar with it. Now think about that for a minute. Those things are easily applied in elementary classrooms. And to me, it only makes sense to apply them in secondary as well. And this is how we can help support students. We can scaffold them. by including those same types of labels and print in secondary classrooms that our students in elementary classrooms are so readily getting on an everyday basis. Let's talk a little bit about fun and effective ways to fill your classroom with precious print. We list in our book, display vibrant and bold labels for supplies such as markers and scissors and glue. So let's think about this in terms of a secondary classroom, such as a science class. Think of the powerful mix of both English and Latin, those labels you could include. Wouldn't that be amazing? Make your lunch menu readable by including pictures. Why do we stop this at the elementary level? Because students even at the secondary level, even more so, making your lunch menu readable by including pictures and text would also help support students whom are learning English as a second language. Another fun way that we suggest is to turn your whiteboard into a daily whole class journal. I even give an example of one of the journals that we did this with in my third grade classroom. There is a picture of this included. What a fun way to have your students come into a secondary classroom just by answering a quick and simple prompt. The example in the book that was given is Wacky Wednesday and then you just ask them a question and they can write anonymously on the board their answer or the first thing that pops into their head. It's an excellent collaborative activity and it supports language arts and different types of literacy skill development. Let me give you a few more examples. Create a word wall to display new vocabulary, parts of speech, and spelling patterns. Think of how this would actually aid in skill acquisition for secondary students. You could also display multicultural songs and poems around the room. Think of the interdisciplinary aspects that you could intentionally weave together here. There is a lot of power in that. Also, display student work everywhere. So folks, why does this stop after elementary? Why are the hallways of secondary buildings not completely saturated with student work? Just think about, close your eyes for a moment, you're walking down an elementary wing and there are examples of student work just layering inside and the outsides of the hallways and classrooms. Why do we not have that same type of display and honor for our students working at the secondary level. Folks I want you to think about how you can offer children deeply interesting and meaningful reading content in your classroom and how you can interact with the children joyfully. I want you to keep in mind that to make reading fun and enjoyable think of ways that you can offer your students deeply interesting meaningful reading content. How can you interact with them joyfully and when you present that content to them? How can you create a deeply human interactive classroom that type of reading environment? A powerful way to do that is by turning your classroom into what Eric and I refer to as a reading playground. This promotes meaningful relationships and engagement with all of your students and this can be done at any age level. Reading should be a part of almost everything we do with our students even if teaching reading I have met with teachers and even in parents who share how they absolutely hate or despise or dislike reading homework. They dread it so much. Their child cries. They don't have time to do it and their child fights them on it over and over and over and over and I say please stop. Reading should never ever ever ever hurt. It should never hurt so much that we see our children crying. Then I often go on on to ask them what it is that they're expected to do. Or I ask the teacher, what outcomes do you really want to see? What are you looking for? I encourage parents also to not hire tutors to ramp up reading skill acquisition during the school year or try and cram it all in during the summer when they're off. I share with them instead ways to make reading fun. I encourage them to print off reader's theater scripts, and these can be done for any grade or age level. Add print props, add costumes, make a family trunk in your home, and put on a family reader's theater play. Record it and share it with loved ones far away. Technology has come so far. There are things that you can do to share these digitally with grandma and grandpa or aunts and uncles far away. Have a group of teens work together for even an after-school literacy fun activity. You can read using a voice jar. This is where you take turns reading a family book or that reader's theater and you read it in an underwater, a galactic, or a snake voice. Oh there's so many different ways that you can do reading. You can echo read, partner read, you can choral read. So many ways to make it enjoyable and memorable. You want to incorporate these things so that they will want to do it more and more and more and more. And to think about our classroom learners we want to be able to reach all of those diverse learners. In order to make reading fun for We want to include joyful activities that are culturally sensitive. This type of practice will help your students grow not only as readers, but also as human beings. Rudine Sims Bishop famously wrote that books should provide windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors. So, in other words, children should see beyond their own experiences. Learn about other people's lives and ways of being. Those are the windows. They should feel valued. by seeing their own lives and ways of being represented. Those are the mirrors. And they should also be able to step into adventures of the imagination, which is what she refers to as the sliding glass doors. Don't get me wrong, we all have standards and targets and goals and objectives, etc, etc, etc, to meet. But we will never instill a successful long-term effect if we are forcing a child to do something temporary, to just get through it. The scenario of no pain, no gain. This, oh folks, this will not lead to a lifetime of learning. It will not lead to motivation, nor independence, or any of those desired skills we want to see in our children. Instead, we want to help develop a yearning, a true desire, one that starts from our toes and goes all the way to our nose. A deep sense of wonder and drive. We want our children sneaking books into their We want them to ask us to read with them. And this magical wand is at your fingertips because you have the power to make reading wonderful. Remember, your enthusiasm for books and songs and poems, stories, dances, and wordplay is contagious. And so is your enthusiasm for the authors and illustrators, singers, and poets who created them. The children, our students, will be swept up in all that excitement that you generate. Because our ultimate goal is to make reading experiences so impactful that our children choose reading on their own. Let me share with you this story. My daughter's positive experiences with reading led her to an all-out reader's theater. Let me explain a little bit further. She eventually developed self-driven selection of text. And to relieve her own sense of anxiety and stress, she would often engage in oral reading activities of all types of different books and She would literally put on these plays. I could hear her in the bathtub. I like to think that the literary experiences we helped to create for her actually led to these relaxing therapy-like behaviors because nothing is more heartwarming than when we see or hear our own children, those in our homes and those in our classrooms, choose to read for a self-selected purpose. And even to this day, I look forward to the small reader's theaters plays of her reading out loud a book in her bedroom or in the bathtub because I know that reading has become a part of who she is. She has identified reading as being her own sense of an outlet and I couldn't have dreamed of anything more powerful. Folks, so here's the bottom line. We need to make sure we don't diminish the natural joy of reading with our children and our students. We know that children do not automatically just stop loving books as they get older. We are often the folks that destroy the joy of reading because we frustrate them. So take frustration out of the equation. Make reading joyful, fun, engaging, and interactive. Make it such a wonderful experience that they want to read more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more. So get out there and turn everything you can into joyful reading experiences. Thank you for joining me today on let's talk teacher to teacher i am here to help you make powerful changes and i look forward to working with you again next week