By Barbara K. Stripling
Teacher-librarians have often struggled to define their role in teaching reading. Instinctively, teacher-librarians have been quick to differentiate themselves from classroom teachers in elementary schools who teach decoding. Nope, not my job. After decoding, the next level of teaching reading is comprehension. Indeed, teacher-librarians accept the responsibility to ensure that students understand what the author is trying to tell them, whether it is in a story/piece of literature or in a nonfiction book during an inquiry project. Comprehension became teacher-librarians’ highest reading goal for their learners [What is the author saying?].
Over the last twenty years, the goal of comprehension has been surpassed in many teacher-librarian minds with the commitment to teach students not only to comprehend the author’s main ideas, but also to interpret implicit meaning and the author’s intent or point of view [What does the author want you to believe or feel about what he is saying?]. Many teacher-librarians who have stretched to teaching the skills of interpretation feel a sense of complacency that they are doing all they can to make a difference in the literacy levels of their students.
But . . . just when we thought we had mastered our responsibility to teach reading by teaching comprehension and interpretation, we discover that the field is beginning to set more rigorous expectations for the teacher-librarian role. Teacher-librarians at all levels are now encouraged to integrate the teaching of deep reading skills [What is your personal connection to what you are reading? How can you build on your interpretation of the author’s meaning to create your own original ideas and products?).
Deep Reading
Deep reading is a cognitive, social, and affective activity. Deep readers engage with the text by reading slowly and thoughtfully, interact with the text by connecting their own personal experiences and emotions, challenge the ideas in the text, and develop personal responses that extend the ideas beyond the text. In deep reading, the reader is an essential component. Deep reading is different from “close reading,” a concept that has been promoted as the ultimate reading strategy by many educators. In close reading, the reader’s task is to probe the text to understand exactly what the author is saying. In deep reading, the reader’s task is to apply his own experience, thoughts, and feelings to put what the author is saying in context and draw deeper and more personal meaning. Deep reading could be called mindful reading.
Teacher-librarians are starting to recognize the importance of teaching deep reading skills. Those who are trying to redefine their teaching responsibilities to incorporate the skills of deep reading need to look no further than their curriculum of inquiry skills. Deep reading is essentially inquiry and meaning-making; the skills of deep reading can be taught throughout the inquiry process.
Inquiry as a Way of Learning
The increasing complexity of learning in today’s digital information environment has provoked teacher-librarians and other educators to recognize that individual learners must take responsibility for their own learning by evaluating and making sense of the glut of information bombarding them. Schools are moving beyond a didactic, teacher-delivery model to a discovery and inquiry-based vision of learning. Today’s students have access to the world of information; they are not restricted by the knowledge encapsulated in textbooks or teacher lectures. To learn in that environment, they must develop an inquiry stance, the motivation to ask questions of the world and seek answers that resonate with them. They must become independent learners who construct their own meaning.
By teaching the process and skills of inquiry, teacher-librarians are empowering their students to pursue their own learning, develop their own conclusions and opinions, and express their new understandings to others. Teacher-librarians can foster the development of inquiry skills across the curriculum and from one grade to the next by adopting an inquiry model and developing a continuum of skills. The Stripling Model of Inquiry provides a six-phase framework for the process of inquiry: Connect, Wonder, Investigate, Construct, Express, and Reflect.
Designing learning experiences around an inquiry-process framework is only the beginning, however. For students to succeed in inquiry-based learning, they must develop the skills necessary to perform every phase of the inquiry process. I collaborated with practicing teacher-librarians to provide a comprehensive framework of skills to be taught throughout the six phases of inquiry, published online in 2019 as the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum (ESIFC).
Teaching Deep Reading Through Inquiry
I was inspired to think about deep reading skills in the context of the ESIFC by reading Maryanne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (Harper, 2018). Although Wolf is focused on the digital environment and she does not mention inquiry explicitly, her exploration of the demands that digital text places on a reader’s brain connected immediately and powerfully to inquiry for me. I recognized that deep reading skills are a natural extension of the critical and creative thinking skills, social context, and personal connections intrinsic in inquiry-based learning. I also realized that, just as students needed to develop different inquiry skills for each phase of inquiry, so they needed to learn the deep reading skills most appropriate for each phase. I captured my initial thinking about the alignment of deep reading skills with the phases of inquiry in an editorial in School Library Connection (Stripling, Reflections on Reading During Inquiry, 2021).
Connect
In the initial stage of an inquiry experience, learners are called upon to connect to the content to be explored. Often, that involves both delineating prior knowledge and reading background knowledge. A deep-reading focus makes both of those actions more personal, so that the learner connects to himself as well as the content. Students can be taught to go beyond the facts they think they already know to identify their own feelings, assumptions, personal biases, and interests related to the topic. They can extend that personal connection by interacting thoughtfully with (e.g., challenging, questioning) any background information that they read or view.
By identifying and contrasting what they already know and feel with what they encounter in their background reading, learners open their minds to discovering new ideas and changing their prior understandings and mental models. Learners’ understanding of their personal connection to the topic provides them with a solid basis to take a personal and thoughtful journey into their investigation.
Deep reading skills that would enrich the Connect phase of inquiry include:
- Explicitly detail what is already known (internal knowledge)
- Identify feelings, assumptions, and personal biases
- Be ready to change mental models
- Predict what might be discovered
- Read laterally
- Determine importance of information
- Create a conceptual map of major ideas and overall context
- Identify gaps and inconsistencies
Wonder
Wondering is probably the essence of inquiry. Too often, school systems prescribe a curriculum that leaves no room for students to follow their own sense of curiosity. Teacher-librarians regard inquiry-based teaching and learning as an effective antidote to the marginalization of student wonder. Students can be taught to ask questions that are based on their own interests and personal connections to the topic and that build in complexity from “what” to “why,” “how,” and “what if.”
Deep reading skills enable learners to move from inquiry questions about the content to questioning and challenging the texts that they read. By interacting during reading (or viewing), students learn to probe beyond a single text and seek complex and diverse answers in multiple texts. Students learn to develop an inquiry stance on everything that they read.
Specific deep reading skills that teacher-librarians may want to teach during the Wonder phase of inquiry include:
- Question the text
- Be aware of own personal interests and curiosities
- Challenge the ideas in text, asking questions like “Why?”, “What if?”, “What would someone else say?”, and even “So what?”
- Extend the ideas in text by asking questions like “What else is important?”, “What has been left out?”, and “What is the deeper meaning?”
Investigate
Investigation during inquiry involves a wide array of critical thinking skills that extend beyond searching and navigating to find relevant resources. Students must learn to make sense of the information within those sources. Because there are so many skills that could be taught during investigation, teacher-librarians tailor their teaching to the specific assignment goals. If, for example, students are expected to make a claim, then they need to be taught to assess the authority of sources, find evidence from different points of view, evaluate evidence carefully, and determine how their own point of view affects their interpretation of the evidence.
A deep reading focus during Investigate brings the research experience to a personal and highly reflective level. Students are taught to challenge their own thinking by seeking multiple viewpoints that both confirm and conflict with their ideas. They are taught to read interactively and respond to the text while reading. Teacher-librarians may teach students to use two-column note-taking, capturing the information in the left column and writing their own questions, opinions, and reactions in the right column. Students are taught to monitor their own comprehension and interpretation, to recognize inconsistencies, inaccuracies, or gaps as they are taking notes, and to reflect on the changes in their understanding throughout their investigation. In other words, with deep reading skills, investigating moves beyond gathering valid and relevant evidence to forming new personal understandings based on that evidence.
In Reader, Come Home, Maryanne Wolf describes “cognitive patience” as an important attribute of deep reading (Wolf, 2018). Teacher-librarians can foster the development of cognitive patience by designing the investigation experience to give students time to read thoughtfully, re-read, and form their own thoughts and interpretations.
Deep reading skills that can be naturally integrated into the Investigate phase include:
- Seek to challenge own thinking with diverse resources and opposing viewpoints
- Read interactively
- Use question-based note-taking strategies
- Respond to the text while reading
- Monitor comprehension and interpretation continually
- Employ reading self-management skills
- Maintain focus and attention
- Set a daily limited learning target
- Make predictions about the ideas that will be uncovered
- Maintain a research log
- Reflect on the growth in understanding
- Develop “cognitive patience” (Maryanne Wolf):
- Spend necessary time to read and re-read
- Use reading and information literacy skills to process and interpret
- Maintain an open mind
- Persist to seek deep meaning
Construct
During the Construct phase of inquiry, students are expected to form their own conclusions and opinions based on thoughtful consideration of the evidence. Teacher-librarians have discovered that this may be the most difficult phase for students who have never been taught how to organize disparate information and then develop their own conclusions. In fact, many students have never been granted “permission” to form their own evidence-based opinions, because school curricula determine the body of knowledge that students are supposed to “learn.”
For many teacher-librarians, the Construct phase may be the most difficult phase to teach. Although students (particularly middle schoolers, in my experience) may readily spout their opinions on a variety of subjects, teaching students to form reasoned, evidence-based opinions on an inquiry topic is complex. Guiding students to synthesize and think conceptually takes masterful teaching that must be sustained across many projects and inquiry experiences.
By teaching the deep reading skills of Construct, teacher-librarians enable students to bring together their personal responses and the evidence they discovered during their investigation. Perhaps more importantly, deep reading enables students to grapple with multiple perspectives and develop empathy for those who hold diverse viewpoints. Students begin to see not only their own personal responses but also the human side to the evidence that they discover.
Deep reading skills during the Construct phase may include:
- Re-read notes reflectively
- Reflect on both internal knowledge (experiences, feelings) and external knowledge (new information acquired during Investigation, own interpretations and responses to that information)
- Seek to develop empathy, or the ability to understand another’s perspectives, feelings, and actions based on the context
- Extend understanding by taking multiple perspectives to interpret information
- Challenge own thinking
- Synthesize and conceptualize how all of their information and interpretations can be brought together into a new understanding
Express
During the Express phase, students have the opportunity to act on their new understandings by creating a product, sharing their expertise, persuading others to accept their point of view, and perhaps even encouraging social action. Digital skills of production and expression empower students to present their ideas effectively.
By adding deep reading skills, teacher-librarians can shift the emphasis of Express to more personal growth and the development of agency. Through careful development and revision of their products and presentations, students develop self-confidence in their own expertise and use their voice to present their ideas with authority.
During Express, teacher-librarians may teach students to:
- Use imagination
- Employ creative thinking to envision original ways to present their ideas and conclusions
- Create products with layers of meaning
- Express their own voice
- Exhibit self-confidence in their products and presentations
- Craft their expressions for authentic audiences and impacts
Reflect
Although reflection is embedded throughout the process of inquiry, it takes a different tone in this final phase. Students can use this time to assess their own journey through the process of inquiry and the effectiveness of their final product. Teacher-librarians can teach metacognitive skills so that students learn how to think about their own thinking and how to plan for improvement in their next inquiry learning experience. Ideally, students will be motivated to ask and seek answers to additional questions that were not answered during their investigation.
If students have been engaged in deep reading throughout their process of inquiry, they are positioned to take an inquiry stance on learning for both academic and personal reasons. They will understand that inquiry is driven by curiosity and the motivation to ask questions about the world that matter to them. They will recognize their own expertise in finding information that enables them to draw their own conclusions and express their voice with authority. They will have agency.
Deep reading skills during Reflect include:
- Reflect throughout the process of inquiry
- Reflect on the process and product at the end of an inquiry experience
- Connect inquiry experience to personal growth
- Draw personal agency and confidence from inquiry experience
Mindfulness and Empowerment Through the Integration of Deep Reading into Inquiry
By integrating deep reading skills throughout the process of inquiry, teacher-librarians transform the learning experiences of young people into opportunities for mindfulness, critical thinking, questioning, and personal growth. When students develop these skills over time and sustained practice, they recognize their own role in learning. They accept their responsibility to make learning personal, to bring themselves into the learning equation. They develop their cognitive, social, emotional, and cultural selves, ready to pursue their own sense of wonder.
Barbara Stripling, recently retired, has had a long career in the library profession, including positions as Director of Library Services for the New York City schools, a school library media specialist and school district director of libraries in Arkansas, a library grant program director in Tennessee, and Senior Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Practice in the School of Information Studies, Syracuse University. Barb has written or edited numerous books and articles and is the creator of the Stripling Model of Inquiry. Stripling has recently developed and published (in April 2019) a re-imagined version of the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum, a PK-12 continuum of the skills that librarians teach to empower students to be lifelong learners (https://slsa-nys.libguides.com/ifc). Stripling has served the profession as president of the American Association of School Librarians (1986-1987), president of the New York Library Association (2016-2017), president of the American Library Association (2013-2014), and current president of the Freedom to Read Foundation (2020-). Follow Barbara Stripling on Twitter and on Facebook.