Literacy concepts and applications

Thoughtful Literacy

"What was the plot of the book you read for today?' 'What is the name of the main character?' 'What is the setting of the story?' Often teachers are so happy that students have completed a reading assignment in a timely fashion, and can recollect the basic details of what they read, they do not encourage the student to go 'one step further' and to critically think about the reading material assigned. But students must also learn to thoughtfully engage with the written materials at hand. If teachers ignore the importance of thoughtful as well as technical literacy, teachers are not setting high enough goals for student achievement. They also inadvertently create the effect of making reading seem like a chore to be mastered for a test in the immediate future, rather than a source of personal enrichment and pleasure over the course of one's life.

The goals of thoughtful literacy are to encourage students to engage with the material they read in a critical manner, as well as to develop better overall technical reading skills and proficiency from this engaged form of reading. Richard Allington stresses that research corroborates his belief that a thoughtful reader is ultimately a better overall student over the course of his or her academic career. A student who enjoys reading is usually a student who feels that he or she has an emotional 'stake' in what is evolving over the course of the text, not simply a student who feels that he or she must pass a test or a quiz.

Over the course of Chapter 5, Richard Allington defines "thoughtful literacy," as the ability to think about the ideas, events, and characters in a text one is reading, beyond just recalling details about the text. Teachers can ask students open-ended questions, rather than simply asking students closed questions with a single answer, such as recollecting the plot. Instead, a teacher can ask did the student find the plot convincing? Did the main character act in an ethical way? Was the setting an important part of the story, or could the story happen anywhere? If not, how would the story be different if it happened near the student's place of residence? Creative writing is another spur to thoughtful literacy, as students can write different endings to stories or different stories featuring minor characters in the tale.

One might add to Allington's analysis of the importance of thoughtful literacy, for older readers, is that older readers most develop the ability to think about the issues raised by a nonfiction text in the social or natural sciences. For instance, questions like 'how does the electoral college affect my life,' 'what is a democracy,' 'how does weather affect what I buy in the supermarket,' or 'how do I use fractions all encourage students to think critically. By encouraging students to think through the use of essays rather than multiple-choice assignments, in other words, to respond rather than to recapitulate or regurgitate material, students become more involved in the process of reading. The students begin to see connections between how they think about what goes on in the books they read for school and how they make decisions in their daily life. By using more effective thoughtful approach to one's instruction, rather than stressing factual recall or phonetics, students can significantly improve their reading comprehension as opposed to their reading ability in a purely technical sense.

Although both teachers and students can learn to provide and to engage with this type of instruction, often students and teacher need time to master these strategies and to become used to offering their opinions, and embark upon an often more uncertain classroom dialogue between teachers and students about content. Again, Allington provides practical advice for pursuing these goals through a series of observations and vignettes, but stresses that spontaneity as well as strategy often comes into play, when soliciting student thoughts.