“The book is in a death struggle with electronic and social media. And right now, it’s losing.”
Host Doug Lemov makes a spirited case for reading whole books in the classroom—especially since today’s students read almost no books outside of school. He’s joined by guests Stephen Sawchuk of Education Week, cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham, and shares an inspiring visit to Eastridge Elementary School in Amarillo, Texas.
“Learning to be able to struggle—to read a challenging text, and to persist with it—is one of the greatest gifts an education can give students,” Lemov says.
Sawchuk discusses the trade-off many educators have made to teach reading through texts, not books, such as shorter-form excerpts and articles, yet he notes that reading whole books builds attention and stamina, because teachers can grow the length of reading assignments over time.
“In this drive to respond to the formats that we think kids are most engaged by, we end up, you know, sort of further weakening the kinds of text and language structures that kids are exposed to,” Sawchuk says. “If you’re looking for just a mechanism to increase the amount of volume a kid is expected to read, a book is not a bad option. You cannot do this with excerpted text.”
Willingham explains that books relay stories, which are “psychologically privileged.” Students are familiar with stories and our minds more readily understand and remember information contained in stories compared to other kinds of texts. Books also call on readers to actively engage and persist to make meaning. “In this novel, you can’t flick your thumb and make something else happen. You kind of need to sit with it and see what you can make of it.”
Books also model long-form reflective thinking, because characters change over time. This stands in stark contrast to modern social-media posts, where a few words or brief video provide a snapshot of right-now considerations.
“Books are the medium in which people have been doing their best long form thinking for hundreds of years. They are the storehouses of almost every idea that is important to us. Whether it is the seeds of democracy or the foundations of science, chances are it has been communicated and passed down in the form of a book,” Lemov says.
A visit to teacher Lori Hughes’ classroom shows how reading a book in class together promotes fluency and other literacy skills. The way students read orally becomes the way they read silently, and the community activity builds enthusiasm across a classroom as students engage with the book, and one another. Principal Genie Baca notes, “The word I would use more than anything is investment. Whether you’re a low reader or a very fluent reader, these kids get so invested in the book and the characters like we’ve never seen before.”
That’s no surprise–as Lemov says, “When what you read is meaningful, you are more likely to read again. But if what you read is an exercise in main-idea-ing, you are likely to choose your phone.”
This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters to join the conversation.
Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea.