Dylon Jacobs was one of many students to raise his hand last fall when a reading teacher asked his class who doesn’t like to read.
Not any more.
Something happened this year.
Reading clicked.
Dylon, 12, a seventh-grader at Explorer Middle School, learned that reading was more than scanning pages laden with clunky words that would derail his rhythm. When he gets stuck now, he tries to visualize what he has read. If that doesn’t work, he draws a picture to see it in his own mind.
"I like reading now," he said.
He likes it so much that not long ago Dylon shadowed classmate Breon mith in the school library. He was stalking a book, "A Child Called ‘It,’ " that Breon recommended and was returning.
Breon, 12, another seventh-grader in Alisa Griffen’s class, also learned from his teacher a new way to make reading engaging, and writing not such a chore.
"She will have us imagine something. She will have us picture it in our heads," Breon said. "She taught me to imagine it, and once you have the image, to write it down."
The strategies are two of many the school is using to cater to an individual student’s needs.
The emphasis on reading skills was not always a priority at Explorer, where more than half the students have family incomes low enough to qualify them for free or reduced-price lunches. Explorer, a campus in south Everett that is part of the Mukilteo School District, had to confront the fact that many students were struggling with language arts and social studies classes because they didn’t have strong reading skills.
"We had a big, fat anthology book," principal Mark Flotlin said. "We came to the realization that a lot of kids can read the words, but don’t actually understand it."
Griffen said the students "were good word callers, but it was the thinking in depth to make the words meaningful that was lacking."
The school recognized that it would need to tailor its reading program to the students. It borrowed ideas from a variety of experts. Last summer, for instance, Flotlin and three of his teachers attended a reading institute at Columbia University in New York to seek strategies for teaching reading to secondary students.
These days, teachers who once taught "block classes" that included English and social studies have added reading to the mix.
The prospect of becoming reading teachers was daunting, but necessary, said Lela Eunson, who teaches sixth-graders reading, language arts and social studies.
"I felt terrified because I was not feeling comfortable with my own reading teaching skills," she said. "It was quite scary for other teachers, but everybody jumped in and started to learn from one another."
There became less "guided reading" in which everyone read from the same text at the same time. Each class came up with large mini-libraries that included many types of books, and there were daily minilessons on reading strategies, such as what to do when students are reading but realizing they are not retaining information.
While students read independently, teachers work with classmates individually or in small groups to develop skills ranging from comprehension to drawing inferences. Griffen spent part of her class time Monday with a small group of students honing nonfiction reading skills for the Washington Assessment of Student Learning exams later this month.
"I get to know them individually as readers, as far as their interests, and I get to know what they may struggle with," Griffen said. "We can’t just have kids read. It needs to be powerful."
Students also record entries in journals that include their thoughts about what they are reading, and they must cite evidence to back it up. There is also room to write down the reading strategies they use.
Eunson pushes her sixth-grade students to go beyond reciting what they read to developing "deep-thinking" skills. If students try to gloss over their thoughts or don’t provide solid backup evidence, they could end up in a conference with her.
"I can’t see your work as a reader," Eunson told a small group the other day while holding up a journal sheet. "Show me your work as a reader."
School officials say it is too early to determine whether the new approach to reading will make a difference in test scores.
However, Flotlin, Griffen and Eunson are convinced the changes are improving student reading and appreciation of literature.
"I wish I could go back with some students from 20 years ago," Flotlin said.
Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or stevick@heraldnet.com.
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