Coaching Students into More Powerful Independent Reading

The following is excerpted from The Heart of Fiction: Reading for Character, Theme and Craft by Kate Roberts.

Our students can get better at reading. More specifically, all students can get better at thinking about the texts they read. Even more precisely, students can get better at analyzing texts on their own so they can come to the conversation or the page or the activity with rich ideas ready to go.

Maybe this is obvious to you. As an idea, it does not seem that original, to be sure. Yet when I look at some of my classroom practices, and the classroom practices of others, it seems as though we have not quite, as a profession, figured out how to make this idea a systematized reality, particularly in middle and high school.

We are trying. We have good lessons and units created through backward design and standards we reach for and measurements we take. We have the knowledge and practice of building engagement and power and stamina for reading through choice. We have our own performance as teachers and the ways we work to connect to students and inspire our classes. We have equity practices that must take root in our schools to make sure that every student is heard, included, valued. We educators have lots of knowledge.

But when it comes to the practice of reading the books they’ve chosen or been assigned, often students wait to be told what to do—they don’t feel ownership over the work and, as a result, don’t find the work engaging, meaningful, or productive. We find students leaving our classes feeling like they can’t—and don’t want to—do the work we are inviting them to do, and this identity often sticks across the years for many students.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Kids can get better at reading books independently. We can help all of our students understand and embrace what it means to be powerful readers, and we can help all of our students understand why it matters to be able to do so. Not just the kids who are already good at reading.

Not just the kids in tracked honors classes. All kids.

Because kids want to be better at reading. Sure, there are students who don’t like reading very much, and certainly many students would deny such a desire for improvement, but in my teaching experience I have never encountered a kid who didn’t want to feel OK about the work they do. But they need a certain kind of help—a kind of help that supports their practice across texts, a help that fosters independence in all reading rather than mastery of only a single text.

Imagine for a moment that you ask your class, near the beginning of a fiction book they are reading, to tell you some of the themes that are being developed so far. I have asked this question infinite times to young people who have had trouble answering it on their own. No matter how many times they have been taught what theme is, how to identify themes, and what to do with them, there is often a baffled look.

The problem is that students have trouble performing or applying essential reading skills without plenty of reminders and support.

Wait, scratch that.

The kids are never the problem. They are the whole point.

The real problem is that I, as the teacher, don’t know what to do when my students have trouble performing or applying the essential reading skills that feed discussion, writing, reading, and engagement.

Here is a typical way I used to respond when students had trouble with theme:

Me: What themes are being developed in this book so far?

Them: [Blank stare]

Me: Let me rephrase that. What is this book really about?

Them: Oh, it’s about a guy who loves someone he shouldn’t.

Me: [Leaning in earnestly] Yes, but what is it really about?

Them: [Looking for an escape] Uh . . .

Me: Is it about love?

Them: Yeah, sure, that’s it.

In exchanges like this one, I do all of the work, and the student leaves feeling like what I am asking is vague and confusing and that somehow they didn’t meet the mark. But it is not the kid who fails in these situations: they have told me exactly what they need—a way to figure out an emerging theme—and I have not given it to them. When students can’t answer the question or perform the skill, they are telling us that they need something to help them do the work on their own.

That something is explicit, actionable, repeated practice and instruction in the skills of analyzing, inferring, and interpreting texts. That something might feel, in a snapshot, more like this:

Me: We have been working on interpreting themes for a while now. How’s that work going?

Them: OK, I guess.

Me: So, what themes are you finding so far?

Them: [Blank stare]

Me: Remember that one way to find a theme is to name a problem the

character is facing and then put it in a word.

Them: Oh, yeah. Well, there’s a guy who loves someone he shouldn’t.

Me: Classic. So, what word or phrase captures this problem?

Them: Like, love?

Me: Yes! That’s it. What else?

Them: Um. Being a rebel? Or, like, doing what you are told?

Me: Fantastic. You got this. Your job is to keep looking for these themes that are emerging at the start of the book. Try to find . . . four or five? I’ll check in with you and a few others who are doing the same work in a couple days. Nice job.

There are small but meaningful differences here. First, I know what to say when a student struggles. I have a strategy they can use to take a step forward. Also, there is a plan in place to work on the skill for a period of time—I indicate that we have been working on this and set up work for the future so that we can get some traction. In conversations like this one, students walk away feeling more like they have a foothold in the skill they need to work on. There is opportunity for growth.

All students need this opportunity. All students need to know that there is enough support there for them to grow and that our classrooms will be set up in ways that encourage, scaffold, and urge that movement.

Students want this opportunity. They want to feel confident and capable and comfortable in our classes. They want to be in on the conversation. They want to feel as though they have a place at the table in our classrooms.

In schools across the country there is great work being done teaching reading skills like inferring characterization, interpreting themes, and analyzing craft, and this great work takes many forms, but it is not sticking to kids as much as we would like. We are not creating, en masse, groups of students who are more powerful and independent in these (and other) core reading skills. We are not creating, en masse, groups of students who are more engaged and interested in reading when they leave us.

There’s no single reason for this. Partly, it is because as readers are told to only read books that are quite challenging, their skill abilities naturally go down and they need supportive coaching. Partly, it is because we haven’t quite figured out how to better transfer learning from year to year, or book to book. This means that sometimes it feels like we are starting from scratch when we discuss ideas or skills in books, and it means that students often come to us waiting to be told what to do. Partly, it is because—in many districts—the identity of teaching shifts dramatically from skills to content, and then we find ourselves not actually knowing how to coach into skills when students struggle, so they continue to struggle. Partly, it is because when students do learn reading skills explicitly, we do not ask them to work in ways that create automaticity. We’ve all seen what it looks like when kids don’t own their reading: students who are not quite sure how to go about unpacking a scene they are reading or teenagers waiting for the teacher to tell them exactly what to think about on a given page. At the same time, we’ve all heard muttering in the faculty lounge from colleagues who are frustrated with what their kids “can’t do.” All of these frustrations come partly from the same point: despite our best efforts, many kids have not been given the tools to do the work better—independently, without our constant guidance and instruction.

Whatever you believe about teaching middle and high school readers, one point of the work is that the kids get fundamentally and demonstrably better at reading things without us. For our teaching to truly impact students, all students, we need to collectively understand how to teach some core reading skills with depth and breadth, regardless of the text, the student, or the teacher.

The Heart of Fiction

To love fiction, kids need to be able to read without our constant guidance and instruction. But how can we coach students towards more proficient, independent practice when they read? This resource offers strategies to teach the skills students need to confidently analyze character, theme, and craft.

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About the Author

Kate Roberts is a national literacy consultant, author, and speaker. She taught eighth grade in Brooklyn, NY and worked as a literacy coach before transitioning into supporting teachers full-time through her consulting work. She is also the author of A Novel Approach, and co-author of Falling in Love with Close Reading (with Christopher Lehman) and DIY Literacy (with Maggie Beattie Roberts).