'It's time to take a hard look at how we teach reading'

We need to encourage children to love and read books if we’re to improve literacy levels, says teacher Nancie Atwell

Boy reading a book under the bed sheets
Students need access to books they want to read

According to UNESCO, one in three children in developing countries are still unable to read after five years in school. But it’s not only the developing world that has a reading problem.

The latest PISA scores indicate that a quarter of US students are failing to achieve even minimal levels of literacy. In England, reading scores rank among the lowest in the Western world – 22nd out of 24 countries.

It's time to take a hard look at how we're teaching reading. Methods matter. So do the findings of literacy research. We have almost a quarter century of studies that document how literacy blooms wherever students have access to books they want to read, permission to choose their own, and time to get lost in them.

Enticing collections of literature—interesting books written at levels they can decode with accuracy and comprehend with ease—are key to children becoming skilled, thoughtful, avid readers.

At my school, where students represent a range of ability levels and socioeconomic backgrounds, every child becomes such a reader. Surrounded by good books, they decide which ones they'll read. Because they decide, they engage. Because they engage, they experience the volume of committed practice that leads to stamina, comprehension, and a passion for books.

My own students, ages 12-14, finish an average of 40 titles a year, from Harry Potter to Hamlet, and excel as readers and critics. Choice and time encourages readers of every ability and background.

Breakthrough: learning to read is the beginning of his autonomous life
England ranks among the lowest reading scores in the Western world

I had a student called Mike. When Mike enrolled at my school, as an eighth grader, he told me sports was his favorite subject and comics the only genre he enjoyed reading. He couldn't name a book he'd like to read and identified no strengths as a reader. His only goal was: "Staying with the book. Sometimes I doze off." He said he hadn't read a single book over the previous twelve months.

Mike summed up his feelings about himself as a reader in one word: "Bad." When I reviewed his school records, I found failing grades and test results that placed him below the 20th percentile in reading.

Mike did not have a lot going for him as a reader. But what I had going for Mike, as his new teacher, was an unbeatable combination: proven methods for teaching reading, a schedule with time every day for independent reading, and a classroom library packed with great stories. The lure of stories is a reading teacher's superhero power.

At the start of each class, I introduce books from my library—tell a bit of the plot and end on a cliffhanger, as an invitation to intrigued readers. With Mike in mind, the second day of school I booktalked sports novels. He practically ripped one of them out of my hand, he was so eager to find out what happened next.

Although the book was beyond his reading ability, a compelling plot and main character, his curiosity – and baseball – enticed him into a fictional world and held him. He could tell me what was happening in the story and what he thought about it: he was comprehending.

"Enticing collections of literature—interesting books written at levels they can decode —are key to children becoming skilled, thoughtful, avid readers."

By the end of the year, Mike finished 36 books. Without worksheets, phonics instruction, vocabulary lessons, or close-reading sessions, he became an adept, motivated reader. He developed reading habits, critical abilities, preferences, and one of the surest signs of full, rich literacy: he had plans for what he wanted to read next.

Anyone's achievement, child or adult, is driven by interest. Until eighth grade, Mike had no reason to be interested in reading. But when he was offered vicarious adventures with characters he came to care for, he wanted to practice reading.

Pupils of Hexthorpe Primary with some of their 1,505 new books
Library users are much more likely to read in their own time than non-library users

Through voluminous practice, he became a reader in the most authentic, productive sense of the word. And he became a better person—smarter, more curious and compassionate, attuned to a range of human experience, and a fully-fledged member of a community of adolescent boys who talked about, and liked books.

Multiple studies have documented the impact of classroom libraries. There are more books in the classrooms of high-achieving schools, and more students who read frequently.

"Educational policy decision-makers must begin to bring children's literature from the periphery of reading instruction to the foreground."

As reading researcher, Richard Allington, put it, "If I were working in a high-poverty school and had to choose between spending $15,000 each year on more books for classrooms and libraries, or on one more [teaching assistant], I would opt for the books … Children from lower-income homes especially need rich and extensive collections of books in their school …"

Educational policy decision-makers must begin to pay attention to literacy scholarship—to focus on comprehension and bring children's literature from the periphery of reading instruction to the foreground.

In June, when I asked Mike to describe his reading breakthroughs, he responded as a reader: “I'm picking out good books now. I'm noticing the way authors use details, create a theme, and make a movie in the reader's mind. I can put myself into the lives of characters. I've learned what kind of books I like. As long as I can choose good books, I will always like reading.”

Instructional fads come, and they go. But human needs and desires remain constant. Every student—and there are Mike’s in every country—deserves the pleasure and meaning that literate adults find in the pages of books we love.

Nurturing that love is not only the rightful work of reading teachers everywhere, it's essential work if we're ever to increase literacy achievement.

Nancie Atwell is the inaugural recipient of the Varkey Foundation, Global Teacher Prize