#SOL18 3-20-18 The Trajectory of a Reading Life

In many ways, I learned to read in book club. Not in school book clubs, those were unheard of both in K-12 and in college when I attended. It wasn’t until after I was in the classroom for several years that I became a member of a book club for adults and learned to read closely. Of course, my college degree offered some proof that I already could read, but until I was invited to be a part of a new book club, founded by a couple of my early teaching mentors, I wasn’t a sophisticated reader.

Book club brought accountability to my reading. Until then, my pattern was to quickly absorb a novel and then move on to the next. Even a simple question like, “What was it about?” gave me pause. What was it about? I read novels like I watched movies: for enjoyment with little, if any, critical thinking. (I read informational text differently, a subject for a different post.)

At our very first book club meeting it became evident to me that in order to keep up and to be a part of the kinds of rich conversations about books that I had witnessed that evening, I would need to read differently.

It’s not a coincidence that I learned to understand the thinking strategies described in Ellin Keene’s Mosaic of Thought through applying them in book club. Several members of my book club worked with Ellin at the PEBC at that time, and Mosaic of Thought was published just a year or two after our book club was founded. To be clear, applying the thinking strategies was not a book club assignment, nor was it ever even a book club point of discussion as far as I can remember. But it was part of our professional development at school and using the thinking strategies to deepen my comprehension in my own reading prepared me to better help the readers in my classroom.

To apply what I was learning about comprehension, I took a metacognitive stance as I read book club selections. I took note, literally on Post-it notes, when I caught myself applying the thinking strategies described in Mosaic of Thought:

• monitor meaning 

• activate, use and build background knowledge (schema) 

• ask questions 

• draw inferences 

• determine what is important in text 

• create sensory images 

• synthesize information 

• problem solve and repair meaning when meaning is interrupted

I learned the value of using sticky notes to hold my thinking so that I would be ready for our conversations. According to Ron Ritchhart, “When our thinking is distributed, when we do not have to rely solely on our internal mental resources, we free ourselves up to engage in more challenging thinking.”

Mosaic of Thought had a powerful effect on my thinking and reading. Over the years I have continued to grow my own reading skills and apply my new learning in my adult book club. There has never been a time in the intervening twenty plus years since that first evening of book club when I haven’t been reading a professional text on teaching reading, and I’ve always tested out those new ideas to see how well they serve me there.

A few years ago, when I learned about the signposts identified by Kylene Beers and Bob Probst In Notice and Note, I used them first in my own book club. I got better at identifying theme and the relationship between character and plot through noticing Again and Again Moments, Words of the Wiser, and Tough Questions. I learned to look for internal conflict and character development when I caught Contrast and Contradictions, Aha Moments, and/or Memory Moments. I realized that the signposts offered me a concrete entry point for dealing with some pretty abstract ideas.

My experiences as a book club member have had a profound influence on the reading teacher that I am today. Book clubs are sacred to me, because I know from personal experience that they have the capacity to change the trajectory of a reading life.