Then, I met two of my professional heroes - Kylene Beers and Bob Probst. During their presentation, they said, "Teachers are making themselves exhausted trying to create interest. Use an interesting text and you will get engagement." Whoa! I remember sitting up a bit more in my chair because I felt like they were talking directly to me. There were three things they suggested about the texts we use in class:
"1. Relevance is about keeping their attention. Relevance equals engagement. 2. Rigor resides in the energy and attention given to the text, not the text itself. 3. When kids finish reading, they want to talk."It was one of those moments where I was like, "Duh! This is so obvious, why didn't I think of it?" I was spending all of my time trying to create interest by making all of these gimmicks I found on TeachersPayTeachers or Pinterest, but in reality, what I needed to do was start the lesson with a better text.
When I returned to school after the conference, my goal was to find more relevant texts, because I felt like more relevant texts would naturally lead into more talking (I needed to show them how to talk, but how could they talk about something they didn't find interesting?) and rethink what I was asking students to do with the text.
I was so nervous in the beginning because I was spending a really long time finding texts. I kept wondering, "Will this be worth it?" What would happen if I spent all of this time finding a text, and creating 2-3 discussion questions to start us off, but nothing else? Would we just sit and stare at each other? Will this be considered "rigorous"?
As I spent my time finding more relevant texts for my students, I realized that a relevant text was all I really did need. The relevant text was enough. Relevant texts led to kids wanting to talk about what they were reading, and since they had so many ideas, it led to deeper, thoughtful class discussions.
Finding the right text really does transform your class...and keeps you from wanting to pull out your hair! Spend less time on "perfect" lessons, and more time on finding the right texts to increase engagement. That is the perfect lesson!
Here are some of my favorite places to find engaging texts:
Argumentative: Anything from the Room For Debate section of the New York Times is great! Check out this text set on Participation Trophies go get your middle schoolers talking!
Informational: Excerpts from Chew on This and Garbology are nothing short of amazing. Lots of information leads to kids wanting to talk about these for hours! Check out this excerpt from Chew on This.
Narrative: Pictures! Lots of inferencing required, which leads to lots of class discussion on perspective. Here's a unit I created using pictures from the Civil Rights Movement to teach narrative writing.
Love and Sparkle,
