By Nicole Wallace
What do you mean you don’t like reading?!
I have long been interested in how to encourage more middle school students to read for pleasure. Middle school is a magical age, and after 12 years of life in the middle I wouldn’t trade it for anything. However, I love reading more than (almost) anything, and it pains me that many of my students don’t share this interest and passion.
I have noticed that something happens between the end of elementary school and the beginning of middle school to change student attitudes towards reading. Reading is no longer a “cool” activity and student willingness to read for pleasure drops off dramatically. Some of this can be attributed to family attitudes towards reading and the increase in screen time vying for attention. I also believe that students don’t always know how to select the right books and lack the perseverance to continue trying different books until they find the right one. However, I am not content to chalk it up to “kids these days” and say oh well!
I don’t blame my students; it has taken me well into adulthood to stop reading books I think I should read and finally just spend time reading the books I like. I refuse to accept the “fact” that middle school students don’t read as normal and give up on trying new strategies to engage students in reading for pleasure. We know that there are so many benefits to reading and I have been on a quest to help students find their place in the reading world.
Over the years to try and engage struggling and reluctant readers I have tried all the usual suspects: graphic novels, high interest non-fiction, and hi-lo books. Unfortunately, I have never found significant success. In recent years I have personally become a fan of audiobooks in my own reading life, and I started wondering if audiobooks might just be what I was looking for.
What the research says
There has been a large amount of research over the years about the importance of reading in an individual’s life. According to the OECD’s 2002 report titled Reading for Change: Performance and Engagement across Countries “student engagement in reading matters more than student socio-economic background in predicting reading proficiency.” Wow! If getting a student interested in reading matters that much, I can’t sit back and only cater to the students who already know they like reading. However, we are already fighting an uphill battle when families and communities don’t value reading. As Cory Turner (2018) says, “you have to see yourself as a reader.” If you don’t identify as a reader, of course you won’t engage in reading! Once I knew how important reading for pleasure was, I knew I needed to try something new to hook reluctant readers, which is what led me to audiobooks.
Through research I discovered that there isn’t a lot of knowledge about this area yet, however, there are some promising beginnings. Gene Wolfson (2008) states that “[a]dolescent students who are not presently readers or listeners need to be part of the literacy experience in today’s world. Traditional strategies can no longer be considered as the first, best, or only solution.” In schools I find we often get stuck trying to enforce the one ‘right’ way to do something, reading included. I believe there is no single right way to read, but that a student is engaging in reading in any format is what is important. Annette Lamb (2017) goes on to assert that “active listening requires just as much concentration as reading.” Students who listen to books are not lazy or disengaged, they still need to focus and pay attention to comprehend the storyline. These facts gave me hope for a new strategy: providing audiobooks to students as an alternative to traditional print mediums.
Sometime during the elementary school years, we back away from reading aloud to students, as do their parents, and expect students to begin reading silently to themselves. However, reading aloud has immense value beyond the primary years, students enjoy being read to, and not every student is ready for this transition at the same time. Wolfson (2008) shares that “[a]ccording to Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, and Wilkinson (1985), the single most important activity for building knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud (p.23).” I believe this is where audiobooks can shine, they can be used to ensure equitable access to books. Wolfson (2008) asserts that “providing a different medium for the traditional presentation of text presents opportunities to create socially and emotionally rewarding literacy experiences. Such positive experiences will serve to motivate adolescents to engage in other literacy activities in reading and writing on their own (Lane & Wright, 2007).” Ultimately this is what it is all about, I want to help students find success in reading so that it becomes an enjoyable activity and one they choose to engage in by themselves.
My inquiry journey
My desire for everyone to enjoy reading has followed me through my time as a Middle School classroom teacher, a Middle School teacher-librarian, and an Elementary School teacher-librarian. I have seen how the excitement for books diminishes as students age and I have developed a growing desire to fight against this phenomenon. Through generous inquiry grant funding provided by my school district I have spent the last two school years exploring the use of audiobooks with struggling and reluctant readers. Although I went into this experiment with the cautious optimism that it would succeed, I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome. Not only did students listen to audiobooks, but they admitted liking them!
My guiding inquiry question was “what impact could access to audiobooks and/or eBooks have on the engagement and interest in reading for so called “reluctant readers”?” I was hoping to make even a slight difference to students reading lives – could I get them from “I hate reading, I will not read” to “sure, I will listen to an audiobook”? I put this into action by purchasing tablets, getting my school set up on SORA Overdrive, connecting with the public library, and purchasing audiobooks for students. My goal was to get audiobooks into the hands of students, show them how to customize their listening experience and get them listening to books – all with the goal of changing attitudes towards reading.
Over the course of two years, this project blossomed into a passion for me and brought to light many accessibility issues that I am now working to address. You can find out more about my inquiry process, and the reactions of students and teachers by checking out my Treasure Mountain Canada project at: https://sites.google.com/sd62learns.org/audiobooksinthellc/home.
What did I learn?
This two-year learning journey started out of a desire to get more students engaged in reading, but it became about accessibility, equity and helping every single one of my students engage with stories. Why are we not providing students with every means possible of fitting in with their peers and having the same reading and learning experiences, despite their abilities? If everyone has read Percy Jackson and I haven’t because I can’t access the written text, I just want to be a part of the conversation and feel like a part of the group. By providing audiobooks we can remove barriers for students who would otherwise be left behind. For me what it comes down to is the purpose for reading: decoding instruction and practice, reading instruction, or a reading experience. Graphic novels and hi/lo books have a place in our schools, audiobooks are simply another tool to allow students to engage in shared reading experiences with their peers.
References
Lamb, A. (2017). Listeners’ advisory part 1: Audiobooks in the school library. Teacher Librarian, 45(2), 52-56. https://www.proquest.com/openview/e44a0c10931686169be93514cc0afa77/1?pqorigsite=gscholar&cbl=38018
OECD (2002), Reading for change: Performance and engagement across countries: Results from PISA 2000. PISA, OECD Publishing. Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264099289-en.
Turner, C. (2018, July 2). Raising kids who want to read — Even during the summer. KQED. https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/51571/raising-kids-who-want-to-read-even-during-the-summer
Wolfson, G. (2008). Using audiobooks to meet the needs of adolescent readers. American Secondary Education, 36(2), 105–114. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41406113
Nicole Wallace is teacher-librarian at École John Stubbs Memorial School in SD 62 Sooke, a K-8 French Immersion school. She is passionate about reading, playing with new technology, and is an aspiring maker!