Middle-schooler Matt Manzione, center,and buddies joke around about cafeteria french fries.
(Michael Williamson - The Washington Post)
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This week our reading (Kylene Beers' When Kids Can't Read) invites us back to middle school. Ahh, middle school. Beers' classroom vignettes and letters to her struggling young 'George' open the door for us on what feels like a real world peek in to the middle school classroom. I love this window in to the classroom. Indulge me a related snippet from a reporter who peeks in on SSR...
It's silent reading time in Mr. Ruble's seventh-grade class, and Matt Manzione is not silent, and he's not reading.
"Matt, come here please. You have a book to read?"
"Yeah, right there." He swats at the Lois Duncan mystery on his desk.
"Get started."
Matt gets started. Not on his book, but on one of those maddening displays of exhibitionism endemic to seventh-grade boys.
It's a paradigm that middle school teachers know too well: a murmur that feeds upon itself, escalating beat by beat toward commotion.
Matt begins to read--aloud. His hand taps the chair.
Across from him, his best friend, Matt Bolster, also begins to read aloud. He's making gulping sounds and frog faces. He turns the pages, one by one, without looking at them. Across the way, their friend Brian fans the pages of his R.L. Stine book and wipes eraser dust off his shorts. The girls read silently. The other dozen boys read silently.
Matt B. shakes his head. "I read so fast." He turns the book sideways and looks at it that way. He turns the book upside down and looks at it that way. He slaps his own face.
Brian gets up and pulls a chair out next to Matt B. until Mr. Ruble looks up.
Matt M. glances from the clock to the book to the clock, his feet propped up.
Matt B. crams his torso under the desk, while still sitting in his chair. "Ooooeeeeoo," he groans.
Matt M. pages through his book.
Backward.
Mr. Ruble hears the rumbling, then looks up and sees the rumbling.
"You guys are in trouble," Ben Ruble says, as sternly as he can muster. "You just lost points."
Matt B.--who doesn't care much about points--runs the pages through his mouth.
Matt M.--who doesn't care much about points either--rests his head on his shoulder and closes his eyes.
Most of the class has stopped reading by now, because who can concentrate when Matt B. is with great ceremony lying down flat across two chairs?
Brian laughs.
Matt B. laughs at Brian laughing.
Matt M. laughs at Matt B. laughing.
When the bell rings moments later, Mr. Ruble is not laughing...
(By Linda Perlstein Washington Post Staff WriterTuesday , June 13, 2000. I see that she's since published a narrative book or two on her observations in schools. I haven't read these...)
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I like these narratives of middle school as a sort of jumping off point as we brave our way from Rosenblatt's theory to the lively reality of classroom life.
We get to tuck our Kylene Beers under our arms - and take a closer look at what and how our Matt Manziones are reading - and smell those cafeteria french fries...
4 comments:
I think I've sat through that class... different names, but the same students. :)
Beers does seem to make it a bit easier to deal with them and work though the issues that cause them to not want to read with such gusto.
What a wonderful and accurate portrait of middle school. Middle schoolers certainly don't care about points or getting their names written on the board (yes, I've seen it). All it tells them is that the teacher is lacking in authority and will not be able to help them academically. I love that Beers gives us some answers to the helping part. Teach Jimmy how to learn and he might shift his behavior.
This is great.
I, too, have had this class and have walked into this class during SSR. This is why I wondered if SSR was "wasted instructional time."
My solution..."This year, we are going to teach a strategy prior to SSR. Following, the students will use this strategy with their reading."
And then I did a little research and talked to a lot of people. A reading specialist in Houston commented, "We do so much reading that is painful. We will never create lovers of books until we show students that reading can also be done for pleasure."
The key...knowing your students' interests, having a knowledge of books that will appeal to students.
I think Kyleen Beers makes some great suggestions in chapter 14.
Thanks for sharing the transcipt of a middle-school classroom! How come it's so much funnier when you're not the teacher who's experiencing it first hand? :)
Although Beers' book has helped me over the years expand my awareness of why students don't like to read, I'm now also fortunate to understand that it's not just about using the cool activities that she describes or the handouts in her appendix, but trying to work through the complexity of "why" that's important.
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