Debbie Miller, READING WITH MEANING

(Here is a link to the publisher's website for more specific info about the book, and here is a link to the Amazon page for this book as well.)

I started this book back at the beginning of summer because of a recommendation from another teacher whom I respect a great deal, and the book was no disappointment.  This book is a great introduction to quality reading instruction - and, even though it is explicitly directed toward the "primary grades" (which usually means K-3 or so), it outlines a program of reading instruction that seems appropriate almost all the way into high school (with some modifications, of course).

I finished the book two nights ago, and I've been mulling over much of its suggestions since then.  There is a great deal to work with here.  I do have some questions, however, about some of the elements that are not discussed in detail.

To begin, Miller is a first grade teacher in the Denver area.  She structures most of the book as a series of chapters that correspond to reading strategy units, and she seems to sequence the chapters in the same order that she teaches the strategies over the course of the school year.  The first strategy chapter (there are four chapters that start the book that I will discuss in a moment) is "Schema," about building background knowledge with students.  This appears to be something that she does early in the school year.  The final chapter is "Synthesizing," something that she mentions she didn't always "get to" at the end of the school year.  Each of these chapters includes an "at a glance" page, some selected student work, texts that are appropriate for the teaching of these strategies, and some discussion of "anchor lessons."  It's a nice way to structure the book as a reference or a resource for teachers looking for specific advice with teaching a strategy.  It also makes the book easier to read and understand.

Miller covers "Schema" (AKA background knowledge or connecting), "Creating Mental Images" (AKA visualizing or imaging, the term I prefer), "Digging Deeper" (AKA higher-order thinking, etc., which is not really a "strategy" per se, but is a useful chapter and discussion to have), "Inferring," "Asking Questions," "Determining Importance in Nonfiction," and "Synthesizing Information."

There's a lot to be said just about this selection of chapters.  Some "quick" comments about this choice of strategies:

• She omits "Summarizing," a key strategy for proficient readers, but includes a component part - "Determining Importance" - in a separate chapter to emphasize that the strategy works differently with nonfiction.  She mentions a kind of summarizing in "Synthesizing" ("retelling") and seems to lump summarizing and synthesizing together in places (as in her discussion of theme through the use of fables).  There's a distinction between synthesizing and summarizing that doesn't come through, and Miller seems to jumble inferring, synthesizing, and summarizing all together in a way that would be confusing if not taught carefully.  (And here it's important to point out that some educational researchers suggest that strategy instruction works best when strategies are not treated as separate, discrete entities, but as related thinking processes that might or might not fit a given situation.)
• Sometimes strategies are taught in a specific order because one strategy helps students understand another.  Sometimes teachers start with the easiest strategy and work toward the hardest.  These strategies are taught because research on proficient readers show that people use these strategies to help themselves understand, and strategy instruction is closer to the real work of reading and understanding.  But the order is itself not that important.  There are, in fact, really only two or three larger strategies with many variations.  Inferring, for example, can be broken into many different components: predicting is a kind of inferring about plot and structure; visualizing or imaging is a way of using mental pictures to infer unstated details about a scene or character; it is also a component of basic sentence-to-sentence understanding.  Students could spend an entire year just studying inferring.  
• While many teachers (including myself sometimes) don't spend a lot of time on "mental images" or visualizing, it is an important skill for readers to enjoy what they read.  Writers don't tell every detail - they depend on readers to do most of the work of imagining scenes and characters.  When a reader struggles to do this, he/she is missing most of the fun.  I was thrilled by Harry Potter because of the mental images I could create as I read; I can't imagine enjoying the book without picturing the dim corridors of Hogwarts, or Snape's evil frown.  (Here I should say that I like the word "imaging" because it allows us to think in terms of all of the senses - imagining smells and sounds as well as sights.)
• Questioning is another neglected strategy.  It helps students a great deal to think about question types and to encourage the kind of careful analysis (and just plain wonder) that questions lead to.  Questioning is a skill that needs to be taught, just like everything else, even though it is often considered a component part of inferring.  

I think the first four chapters are a nice general introduction to a reading workshop and to the general look and feel of a welcoming class.  It's nice to think about a pleasant primary classroom - since so many of us enjoy reading at this age - and the kinds of things that make kids enjoy reading in these kinds of settings.  (Of course, it is jarring to read about a teacher signing letters to students "Love, Mrs. Miller."  As a middle school teacher, I would never do that.)  There are important points though, such as Miller's emphasis on "building relationships," listening, and cultivating mutual respect.  Miller sounds like a "look for the good in them" kind of teacher who finds excuses to like her students, and I'm sure that helps many of them to like her.  (Not absolutely necessary for effective teaching, but it sure helps when the students like you.)  Miller can also be pleasantly blunt, and she explains herself well in most places.  Building relationships starts with noticing "the little things"; students need to be reading books that are at their instructional level because it is difficult to use strategies with books that you understand completely, and that you don't understand at all.  

My biggest criticism comes from the following passage that occurs in the middle of the book, starting on p. 101, about "Work Activity Time":

In the beginning of the year, children use work activity time to investigate and explore the materials in the classroom.  [...]  I don't worry about who goes where, for how long, or how many are already there.  There are no sign-ups, rotations, or elaborate plans for children to fill out.  I simply ask them where they'd like to go and what they'd like to do, and remind them of what we've learned about being respectful and thoughtful to each other and the materials in the classroom.  [...]  If I want to challenge children's imagination, promote their love of learning and inquiry, and encourage them to become independent learners and thinkers, they need to be the ones deciding where they'll go and what they'll do.  [...]  Once children begin to integrate their work into their play, the materials are no longer an end unto themselves; they've become another means for creating understanding and constructing meaning.  They've become a means for living the learning.

This passage - with begins with a long description of an idealized classroom full of self-motivated, brilliant six-year-olds, and ends with this passionate endorsement - leaves me a little speechless.  I would really love to make this happen in my classroom.  But could this ever work with 12 and 13-year-olds?  How on Earth does Miller make this work at all, even with her first-graders?  It sounds like she lets them "play" for the last 40 minutes of every day, and that sometimes (perhaps even "often" by the end of the year) great things happen.  How, precisely, does Miller set up and maintain this?  How does she avoid boredom and conflict?  How does she keep an entire class engaged, motivated, and eventually productive?  It's like she threw this beautiful mystery into the middle of her book, and it's not clear to me how I might replicate this in my classroom, if such a thing were possible.  Is it, possibly, an exaggeration?  Something that little kids are capable of, but not anyone over the age of 8?

In the end, most of the criticism I have for Miller comes from the fact that we teach very different students - my 7th graders are different people from her 1st graders, in many important ways.  Some of her ideas just wouldn't work.  With a little adjustment, however, the bulk of this book is excellent.