Literacy on the Edges

"In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking." 

                                                                  - Sir John Lubbock

In school days that are jam-packed with content to "cover," do you ever wonder what might be getting lost in the shuffle?

If you finished this sentence, what would you say?

 "I just don't have time for..."  

What are the top things on your list?  Why don't you have time for them?  If they aren't important enough to warrant your use of time, why are you able to list/notice them?

Time and again, what teachers across the country say that they just don't have time for students to read independently during class, even with support.  Even more often, they say that they don't have time for real writing instruction and practice, such as that which is done during writing workshop.

What do we seem to have time for and why?  

It seems like activities that are related to reading and writing are abundant--activities seem to address standards, occupy students' time, and might even "please the principal" (if observed) while the teacher attempts to meet the diverse needs of students.  Yet, one of the most interesting warnings I've heard lately came from Lester Laminack at the 2013 All Write!!! Summer Institute.  Lester asked us to consider the difference between doing activities related to content and doing activities relevant to content.  

What did he mean?

When completing a task that is related to reading, a student is using doing something that relates to reading but doesn't really require stamina for or joy in reading.  

When completing a task that is related to writing, a student is doing something that relates to writing but doesn't require the student to think about his/her work as an actual writer. 

Instead, s/he might be reading an assigned text, responding to a text that was just read, citing text evidence, describing how to solve a problem, or writing to a prompt.  Other such activities might be creating a word search or crossword puzzle to go along with a story, filling in workbook pages, drawing a favorite scene from a story, completing book reports, completing graphic organizers, etc.

So how do we make time for relevant reading and writing?

We have decide--BELIEVE TO THE CORE OF OUR BEING--that reading and writing every single day \ matters for every single child and that above all else, it will make a difference.  (Research abounds on this topic:  Richard Allington, D. Ray Reutzel, Robert B. Cooter, Jr., Brian Cambourne, Patricia Cunningham, Stephen Krashen, Timothy Rasinksi, Donald Graves, Donald Murray, Frank Serafini, Irene Fountas and GaySu Pinnell, Kelly Gallagher, Peter Johnston, Alfie Kohn, the NAEP Report, Ann McGill-Franzen, etc., etc., etc.  As Allington and McGill-Franzen say (2013), "There are too many research reports on the relationship between reading volume and reading achievement to continue to ignore the necessity of expanding reading activity for struggling readers.")

Classroom Audits and Edge Times

Of course, you have to consider your use of your reading and writing block times.  How are they used?  Why?  Are you familiar with the value of conferring with students?  Do you know how to use information you gather during conferences in order to propel students forward as readers and writers?  

In their book, No More Independent Reading WithoutSupport (Heinemann, 2012), Debbie Miller and Barbara Moss suggest conducting an audit of exactly how classroom minutes are spent.  Are there minutes spent taking attendance/lunch count, lining up, listening to announcements, waiting outside of restrooms for the class to reappear, waiting for a PE or music class to be released/admitted, during dismissal time, etc?  If so, you can reclaim those as reading minutes, which is called "edge time" (see below).  They also ask us to closely consider the practices that we deem valuable--the activities we guard.  Consider whether the amount of time spent on things like calendar activities (sometimes year after year) is really worth it?  Could it be 15 minutes instead of 27?  

And what about the reading block or writing time?  Are there activities that are being done that are related to reading/writing but not asking students to actually read or write (for authentic purposes)?  In his book, GoodChoice (Stenhouse, 2008), Tony Stead audited his literacy stations to find that his students were only reading for a total of 5.4 minutes during a 40-minute period.  He adjusted his station activities to ensure that each one involved real reading for purposes that students would deem valuable (as did he).

As Donalyn Miller describes in Reading in the Wild (2012), students need to learn to travel everywhere with a book in order to be prepared for a "reading emergency."  (As adults, we encounter reading emergencies when we are waiting for appointments at various offices, waiting for sporting events to begin, waiting for kids to emerge from after-school practices or tutoring, etc.)  As Miller states (p. 11), "Wild readers don't have more hours in the day than other people...it turns out that they read in the edge times, snatching a few minutes of reading time between appointments... life is full of wasted moments in between our daily commitments."  She contends that without frequent reading time to develop good reading habits, students will not learn to read during "Edge Times".  

Think of the way you plan reading and writing times for students as a way of "painting to the edges."  Imagine paintings that you see that consume the canvas from edge to edge and need no frame.  This is how our time should be with reading--or even with writing in notebooks!  Students should never experience a dull moment when there is so much reading and writing to be done!