Weekend Reading Purposes

Having taught in a TC-model classroom for a semester, I can tell you that it can sometimes feel like a bureaucratic nightmare.  The self-assessment work students must do for almost every assignment often rivals the length of the assignment itself and the planning work they must accomplish before moving forward with an assignment can seem painstaking.  I sympathized with my students; this bunch of eighth-graders was under a great deal of pressure on the homework front.  Still, based on the reading conferences I had with my students, I often wished that they would go into their independent reading, particularly over weekends when most of their reading got done, with more of a plan.  Tovani’s “Weekend Reading Purposes Review” and “Purposes Preview” from pages 53 and 55 were just what I didn’t know I had been looking for.

Tovani’s students are clearly trained to recognize that all reading is reading, not just the reading of books or magazines.  Their responses are interesting and, had I had such responses from my own students, would have painted a better picture of their reading processes and, thus, would have really helped inform my teaching.  “This weekend I read an article about a game online.  My purpose for reading this was to learn about upcoming events in an online game I play,” writes Steven (Tovani 53).  The idea that Steven kept track of his reading to that extent and thought about why he was doing it will help him in the future when he must do research.  He understands his process for accomplishing a mundane, everyday task so, naturally, this is a way of thinking about information use that has been instilled in him and which will now inform his work in the future.

Chris’s entry was also very interesting: “…I read the Applebee’s menu… I looked for things I liked, and if I didn’t like it, I didn’t read it” (53).  This is a great window into the mind of Chris, a discerning young Applebee’s diner who wants what he wants and to hell with the rest.  If this is his mentality towards food, might it also hold true in other areas?  Isn’t this information a teacher should want to know?

Page 55’s figure 5.2 is written out from the perspective of a teacher planning a Spanish lesson but it could just as easily be modified to help a student anticipate the struggles he or she will face in independent reading this weekend and to self-generate solutions to those problems.  If the solutions don’t work, here is a record of what was tried before so that future reading experiences can be better.

Understanding reading purposes, particularly for long reading assignments that take place over a weekend or for mundane reading situations can provide teachers with a great deal of useful information about their students.  It’s not what Chris got for dinner, it’s how he decided.