Teaching Seventh Graders Their First Read with Big Book

 

An experience of pleasure found in reading a full book counts pretty much as its own reward. However, setting yourself up to a challenge in accomplishing this feat by your students can be quite testing. The motif to drive a reading campaign among students and sustain their spirit all along this venture asks for a good deal of planning and temperament. Obviously, as a teacher you need to be aware of the fact that not all your students will rise to this demanding task, especially within a certain time frame, and your expectations, therefore, will have to be tailored to your students’ reading caliber and proclivity. Let me help you feel the experience in real time for I, as a teacher of English, have personally achieved this landmark with the students of grade seven, and if the vibes are rightly picked, you too can.

The Task

Well, it was simple. Read a big book, at least 300-350 pages long. That’s all. You might wonder that this page count doesn’t even come close to what you might deem a big book looks like. You are right, sure it doesn’t, but in this particular case, it does. Let me explain, how? Here’s a class of students that have made it to grade seven without a good history of reading except for some thin sets of books in their early primary years. Even that much of exposure to fiction should have been aided and cushioned by the teachers’ support. Then there came along a good stretch of withdrawal from reading till they waddled into class seven. It was then, at this point in time, that I decided to get them round over to this reading assignment as their task for summer vacation which was due in a couple of days.

Planning

This is where the flood gates of questions tore into my mind. Assigning the same book to a student body that was peopled by over sixty students in two sections felt a bit too undemocratic. So, what should I do? There had to be some caliber assessment and accordingly some compromise on the page count as well, because not everyone looked equally cut out for the task in hand. The only sane approach was to table the discussion with students and give them a chance to select the book of their own choice. The only filter I had placed in between their choice was that of textual length and age-specific fiction. It took us all just a couple of periods to come to terms with the book-selection criterion, and then another question arose as to how to ensure they would read. The simple strategy was to objectify the reading against some rewards. So, I deemed it right to help them understand a couple of things in this regard. Firstly I capitalized on their emotional sense of awe that would fill their heart as soon as they would finish their first big fiction. Secondly, as a reward, I promised to celebrate their reading in public i.e. in the form of a reading expo or exhibition at school. This worked. They crooned a big ‘yay!’ slogan to it, and finally we parted for vacation. Fingers crossed.

The ُُPitfalls

The reading frenzy faded out as soon as the vacation adrenaline kicked in. And, obviously, so it was expected. Majority of them went packing for their home town or to other farther recreation sites. The few remaining gave in to the charms of late night waking for online movies, fast food home deliveries and endless chit chats. This means they spent half of their daylight time sleeping, and another quarter of it restoring themselves to the happy-go-lucky vibes of the previous day. Their facebook stories and whatsapp statuses left me feeling dips of anxiety and concern for my reading project. The only solace I gambled on was the time that was still remaining till the school reopened. “Even if they start reading thirty days before the school, the job looks pretty much done,” I consoled myself and kept the fingers crossed yet again.

It All Goes Haywire

Just a week remained till the school bells would toll to call them back in campus. To my utter disappointment, only a few of my ‘scholars’ had shown up on media with just so much as the selection of the book. That was shocking indeed. Anyhow, I prepared myself to scooch down and make room for some in-class reading time alongside the routine lesson plans. In just a couple of days at work, I realized that without my recurrent intervention and inquiry, a big majority of them would not even care to read at all. So, it was a daily investigation of reading progress that ultimately got them going. But, as irony would have it, this reading task lost its spirit of fun and entertainment and started feeling like an extra and unwanted dose of daily bookish assignment. I was caught in a dual predicament: wear a brave face and make them feel inspired to the end; make sure they read daily at a steady pace.

Academics Take Over Once Again

Whereas you can always manage sprints and pauses in your personal reading time, academic studies, on the other hand, defy all such whims. You have to stay orientated to maintaining or improving your grades in tests and exams, which, quite ironically, came along pretty fast in this particular case. Therefore once again, my students had to shelve the fiction in hand and gear up for the monthly tests, that would eat away another week of possible reading at home. I was getting bone weary having to shoulder two things in hand and often felt forced to call it quits, but somehow pressed on. The post test discussions and parent-teacher meetups took another week until we resumed the routine course of studies, and obviously, our coveted, though fragmented reading of novels as well. Anyhow, once again we got the hang of it and steadied ourselves for academics and obviously for reading too. Once the students realized that there was no way out of this, they sped up a bit. To my relief, some keen readers started reporting the completion of their books, while others lagged miles behind. My readers went off road once again to ensure their participation at school sports and other co-curricular activities, which meant another gap. Only if they had capitalised on their vacation time for reading, it would have been all over by now. However, I relaxed the schedule and our reading chuntered on into another month. The patience paid off and finally all thumbs went up just before the term exams. Thank God.

The Show Time

Exams and the subsequent PTMs being over, I announced my long awaited reward for students' accomplishment in reading a complete big book. This lifted some eyebrows in excitement and widened some lips into a cheerful smile. As promised, my seventh graders were going public for the first time in order to present their learning from books of their choice. But, how? That was a big question indeed. So, I brainstormed with them the ways we could do it in just as little time as possible. Of all the possible options, we came together on one course of action, and that was to celebrate the event as a book review exhibition. With a couple of computer lab visits to do some research on the authors and compile some data on summaries and analyses, students got the hang of it, and completed the unfinished typing and composing jobs at home. Those who could not compose well, sent their handwritten stuff to me, and I did it for them. Once the written task had been successfully finalised, there came up the responsibility to do up the tables for the show time. All they needed was a few hours after school just a day before exhibition, and they did a spectacular job. The following day, every bit of activity, from inaugural ribbon cutting to the presentation of books, and from the intellectual one-on-one buzz among students and their visitors to the last address by the chief guest, was not only self-rewarding but also self-actualizing as well. I could feel a sense of reawakening that I had occasioned among my students through a simple act of reading their First Big Book.