Highway to the Reading Zone

6 October 2013

Dear fellow UVEI mentors,

I write to you today in a format suggested by Nancie Atwell, author of In the Middle and, most relevantly to this post, The Reading Zone. This relatively slim, but very valuable volume is a hands-on, you-are-there account of life in a reading zone. While her writing focuses largely on K-8, it seems much of what she covers could apply to high school students as well.

This guy likes to read. Don't you?

Atwell provides a five days a week reading time where students are encouraged to find their way into the "zone" - defined via one of her students as "the place readers went when they left [the] classroom behind and lived vicariously in their books." Her goal is to build and support readers, to give them the tools to become critical, self-driven devourers of text. This book provides many useful tips on how to construct a reading zone, and some examples of student responses to books, handouts she provides to the students, and many other resources that present her material in a clear manner.

Atwell encourages her students to read what they want to read. If this means discarding a book they don't like: so be it; if it means re-reading a book that they love: so be it. The students create their reading list, there are no worksheets or vocabulary tests, and the rewards are intrinsic - the joy of getting lost in a book is the only reward. Of course, the skills taught in the reading zone serve students well in many other pursuits. She reports that students read more than 30 books a year, and that this reading helps the students think critically, dissect text in other classes, and, most importantly to her, cultivate the "personal art" of reading.


As a Language Arts teacher, I found much to like in this book, even if I don't see a direct path to my school adopting a five day a week reading time. Many of the qualities she encourages in her readers can be applicable to any reader a teacher is trying to encourage. One of my favorite parts was that opposed to book reports, she asks her students to write letter-essays:

"Each letter-essay should be...a personal, critical response to one book - in other words, not a series of paragraphs about a series of books, but a long look at one that intrigues you...select at least one passage you think is significant, in terms of how you reacted to the [book]...Once you've written your letter, hand-deliver [it] to your correspondent. If that's me, please put in in my rocking chair...When a friend gives you his or her journal, you should answer..." (Atwell 77).

What really struck me about this section is the one to one connections Atwell fosters in this practice. These connections are not just between she and her students, but also between the students. I love the idea that a letter-essay might be addressed to another student in the class, and that this letter-essay is the start of a conversation, not the end of it.

The question that remains for me after reading it is how do I, as a student teacher, apply these lessons and practices, to a program that offers significantly less (if any) reading time?

I recommend this book highly - it's a quick and engaging read, one that definitely put me in that zone and, most importantly, had me scanning the shelves for what to read next. I'll sign off as she does:

Love,
James