The Meaning of Reading

No matter how you look at it, reading is a vital skill necessary for student success. That is why I willingly dedicated all of my 4 hours in the classroom today to assessing student reading and why I will do the same tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow until a team of 7 others and I have tested the reading level of every 6th and 7th grade student in the building. As an avid reader myself, to me, reading is both academic and enjoyable. Many students agree with me, but many, especially those who struggle with reading, don't. Reading for some is a laborious process that requires effort better spent on my self-indulgent activities. Until their reading abilities improve, these students will never understand the joy that comes from 'free reading' as I call it, or the academic freedom that comes with literacy.

The test today consisted of three short stories of varying difficulty that the student was asked to read aloud. A timer was set for 1 minute, and after that minute, the student was instructed to stop and move on to the next reading. Meanwhile, I read along on their score sheet and put a dash through each word they mispronounce or skipped. Students were not marked off for adding words, but they were for substitutions, even between 'a' and 'the' when there was no apparent change in the meaning of the sentence. I was instructed to allow variations on words due to differences in dialect, but no other exceptions could be made for the sake of consistency between test administrators. The final score on the reading test was a combination of the number of words read and the number of words read correctly. The score would result in the students being placed in tiers of reading ability and their scores would be distributed to all of their teachers. All of this in mind, I began testing.

Testing was hard. I wanted to coach and encourage the kids when they came to a word they didn't know, but I could only wait patiently for them to struggle through it, eventually giving up or settling for some butchered pronunciation. But, I had to keep in mind, this is a test of their reading, not my skills as a teacher or reading coach. I saw students fly through the texts flawlessly and students struggle with every 5 or more letter word. One student had a lisp, which made it challenging to determine what words he knew and which he did not. I administered the test to one English Language Learner who spoke slowly, but read with confidence. I administered the test to a female who read with such enthusiasm and with such great nuances that she actually made me laugh at the story I had heard two dozen times already. She didn't read the most words, but she read beautifully. Then there were the kids who sounded out each word, but read them all perfectly but with no nuance at all. There were students who read so quickly that they sacrificed comprehension for speed. And there were kids who with jittery voices, shaking with nerves despite my attempt at a calming demeanor. How can one test adequately assess all of these students?

Reading is more than a score on a test. Reading is a life skill necessary to succeed in American society. It is the key to intellectual freedom and the answer to intellectual curiosity. Reading is fun as well as enlightening. Reading can be a rewarding experience, but like any skill, it must be learned and honed. The reading test I administered today tested only basic literacy, and though the student's final scores fall neatly into a 3 tier system, there are not 3 distinct kinds of readers. Readers are as diverse as students, and each reader should be met where they are and encouraged and coached to improve. Literacy is the right of each student, but it is the responsibility of the teacher to guide them through the process of learning and to stimulate their interest in gaining this skill.