The reading zone, a phrase coined by students of Nancie Atwell in reading workshop, is discussed in her book titled the same. I recently reread Nancie’s book and marveled at the dichotomy we face in English classrooms. What she talks about – how to help kids become skilled, passionate, habitual, critical readers – is my philosophy on teaching language arts. Her blend of reader and writer workshop, poetry study, mini-lessons, and booktalk discussions is exactly how I would want my ideal classroom to be structured. On the other hand, she talks about the teaching of comprehension strategies, which became big in the 90s and continue to infiltrate the field, as “interfering with the reading zone” (54).

As a new, impressionable teacher I see the benefit of teaching kids how to comprehend, with seven clear cut strategies of proficient readers. The truth is, though, they will only comprehend what makes sense to them. To widen what makes sense to them, we need to give plenty of time for reading books of their choosing. Atwell aptly states, “One of the many virtues of frequent, voluminous reading is how it fills up the file drawers of long-term memory, increases our vicarious experience, and improves our comprehension of the world and the word” (60). The more they read, the more they will know, the more they can understand.

So Nancie’s call to English teachers is this: What kinds of readers do you want to leave your room? What kinds of writers do you want to leave your room? When considering curriculum and planning, how can you establish a community of readers and writers that will leave your room more passionate, habitual, critical and literary?

Image courtesy of Photobucket.

The episodic notes entails three parts.

• Students draw a picture to represent the six (or three, or however many you want to do) most important events, moments, or episodes in a reading piece.
• Next to the picture, they should jot a few notes about what happened (or maybe their picture covers it).
• Finally, they should write WHY the episode is important.

I discovered the WHY step most of my students didn’t do. We’ve done drawings and notes on what happened in a long story before, but I’ve never asked them to include WHY that scene was important. I don’t know if they were rushing or just plain forgot.

Anyway, the students who did all three steps really thought about the play’s events, especially Act 4. Because the ending of Romeo and Juliet is clear from the beginning and we are so far into the play, they could see why each step of Act 4 they drew out was important to the plot. They made some great inferences to the relevancy of each drawing (episode) - I’m looking forward to grading 100% quizzes tomorrow because they thought so hard about the Act.

Student samples:

“The friar is giving Juliet a potion to fake her death. This is important because this is where Juliet gets out of marrying Paris.”

“Juliet is going ‘What if?’ and worrying herself about the plan. This is important because Juliet is thinking of the ways the plan could fail, and we know it does.”‘

“This is a picture of Paris arriving to the wedding. This is important because the wedding is today and Juliet is gone.”

“Juliet is found dead the day of the wedding. Her family starts to plan her funeral. This is important because her plan is working.”