Attention and Insight
What I've been reading, watching, learning, and listening to, plus my takeaway
If you are joining us for the Teaching Readers (Not Reading) book study, we’ve reached Part 1! We are now considering which influence/factor for developing readers we are most interested in learning more about in Part 2 (see discussion thread here).
In the meantime, here’s what I have been reading, watching, learning, and listening to.
What I’m reading
Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury (fiction)
The first book, told in a series of interconnected short stories about growing up and loss, also calls up nostalgia for the familiarity of small town. But this comfort is punctured with a rash of murders. It almost feels like a prologue for the next book in the Green Town series…
Something Wicked This Way Comes gives shape to an impending sense of doom: a carnival. The calliope’s call draws people in to fulfill their desires and wants, but there may be a cost. Two teenage boys, Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade, along with Will’s father Charles, team up against Mr. Dark and company. Reading this in 2022, with all our connectivity and yet limited rewards for using it, I saw lots of parallels.
As a celebration for finishing these two books, we visited the Ray Bradbury park in Waukegan, Illinois.
What I’m watching
Donnie Darko (movie)
This was a rewatch for me. The cult classic is about a troubled teen narrowly evading death and subsequently visited by a guy in a bunny suit (don’t ask, just watch, and be warned - harsh language/mature content). It’s hard to categorize: Psychological thriller? Satire? Science fiction? Maybe as intended, considering the high school setting.
One of the best scenes is in health class, when Donnie is asked to assess a risky high school situation as based on either “love” or “fear”. He resists the binary thinking. “There’s a whole spectrum of human emotion. You can’t just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else!” he yells at the rigid teacher. A great example of being a complex teen in a simple world.
What I’m Learning
Executive Functions: Foundations for Self-Regulated Reading, Kelly B. Cartwright (webinar, International Literacy Association)
Dr. Kelly Cartwright, a professor of psychology, neuroscience, and teacher preparation at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, explained how executive functioning skills (EF for short) strengthen connections between different parts of the brain when learning to read.
When a student lacks EF, they struggle in one or more areas.
Cartwright offered specific teaching ideas to strengthen the different executive functions. For example, using visual organizers to teach expository text structures and story maps helps make invisible mental processes visible.
“Students with reading difficulties often have problems that extend beyond word recognition and language comprehension.”
What I’m listening to
“How Reading - Not Scanning, Not Scrolling - Opens Your Mind”, The Ezra Klein Show (The New York Times)
In this podcast, journalist Ezra Klein interviewed Dr. Maryanne Wolf, author, researcher and scholar at U.C.L.A.’s School of Education and Information Studies.
They discussed the changing landscape of reading in the digital age. Wolf worries about how reading online is creating readers who only skim and scan, especially with the induced speed to read via social media and email. The digital reading environment can also create an addiction to these sources of information. (Wolf notes a study in which parents were observed reaching for their smartphone several times while reading aloud to their child.)
Paraphrasing/summarizing Wolf’s concern based on brain studies, reading digitally often results in shallow reading. We aren’t looking to read deeply; we simply want to get to the end of the text.
“We are becoming cognitively impatient.”
Although she isn’t yet sure what the answer is yet, Wolf believes cognitive patience is a capacity that can be learned.
View reading through the lens of a “bi-literate brain”, with different strategies for different reading environments.
Reading aloud to children has distinct benefits; it “lights up” more parts of the brain compared to simply hearing language or watching a movie.
Prioritize print reading to achieve a deeper state of understanding, awareness, and insight.
Klein shared his own experience with this while reading on a plane.
“I seem to get flashes of insight that can unlock whole problems or open whole new avenues for myself. It’s meditative but epiphanic. And every time I get off of a plane, I say to myself, I’m going to do that more. I’m going to do that more. I’m going to sit and I’m going to have quiet time with a book.”
What I know right now
I spent a few of my summers in Illinois, about an hour away from Bradbury’s hometown of Waukegan.
Maybe because it was the 80s, I had a ton of freedom. I spent a decent amount of that time at the public library. I’d read or listen to short stories by Bradbury, Hitchcock, and similar writers. Suspense/thriller/horror fiction captured my attention. I could become deeply engrossed in reading, losing my sense of time and place. The issues and themes presented in these stories I believe gave me the mental practice and insight to better engage in similar situations and worries in real life.
Unfortunately, this immersion into reading is not a common experience today, especially in schools. Many literacy curriculum programs treat book choice, independent reading and reading aloud as additional activities, something to add on if you have time. (And there’s never time.)
This begs the question: What type of reader are schools creating?
While I don’t have any specific responses either, I am thankful that I did not have access to all the digital distractions back then. Knowing my own EF challenges, I don’t know if I could have escaped the siren call of social media and smartphones on top of the social pressures of adolescence.
Yet the Internet is not the only factor here. If the majority of instructional time is spent on surface-level literacy experiences, i.e. decoding, answering comprehension questions, worksheets, etc., I don’t think we can simply blame the digital world for creating shallow readers. Literacy instruction will fall short without access to great texts, the time to read them, and the support students need to become independent, lifelong readers.
Maybe that’s where we start: with the reader and building the curriculum around them.
From November 7 through December 16, we are reading Teaching Readers (Not Reading) by Peter Afflerbach (Guilford, 2022).
In this book study, you will develop a deeper understanding of the science(s) of reading and build greater confidence in conversing about literacy instruction with teachers and other colleagues.
You can purchase the book on the publisher's website, Amazon, or wherever it is sold.
To participate, watch this space for future responses to the book. Read along, leave a comment on a future thread, and respond to others’ comments when something resonates.
Here is the suggested schedule for reading together:
November 7 - 11: Introduction, Chapters 1-3November 14 - 18: Chapters 4-5November 21 - 25: Chapter 6November 28 - December 2: Chapters 7-8
December 5 - 9: Chapters 9-10
December 12 - 16: Chapter 11, Conclusion
This is an incredible read.