By Dr. Jennifer Scoggin & Hannah Schneewind, 2024 Conference Presenters
We spend a tremendous amount of time discussing, analyzing and, in all honesty, worrying about students’ reading growth. And yet, the ways in which many of us are mandated to measure and report growth do not capture the full picture of who our readers are or their reading journeys.
Last June, Hannah spent time with Damian, an exuberant first grader, as he joyfully read his book aloud. Damian proudly read every word, laughed about the story, closed the book, and immediately picked up another, smiling the whole time. “Want to hear me read some more?” he asked. Damian eagerly displayed all the books in his book bag, sharing how he selected each one and commenting on his favorite parts of each.
Later, his teacher confided in Hannah: “I am worried that no one will see his growth. No one will know how hard he worked to become a confident reader who can decode words on his own. They won’t see how he lit up when he discovered an author he loves or how much he participates in class conversations now. They will just look at his independent reading level at the end of the year and see only that he is a struggling reader, that he is still below grade level.”
For Damian, and so many students, reading growth encompasses much more than what traditional assessments measure. Reading growth can mean reading with increased confidence, finding one’s own purpose for reading, actually wanting to read, or being able to read for long periods of time. Reading growth can also mean being moved to take action in response to reading, creating text sets based on interests, making book recommendations, and seeing texts as an essential part of life. Reading growth can, and should, encompass both growth in reading and growth as a reader.
Does this story resonate with you? As we advocate for a more comprehensive definition of reading growth, we consider three essential questions:
- What is reading identity?
- Why does reading identity matter?
- How can teachers positively impact students’ evolving reading identity?
What is reading identity?
Reading identity is complex, nuanced, and dynamic. It includes the many aspects that make up a student’s understanding of themselves as a literate being. How students feel about reading, what, where, when and with whom they like to read, whether they are engaged as they read, whether they see reading as purposeful or not, their understanding of what it means to be a ‘good’ reader: all of these (and more!) factor into reading identity.
There is no one right way to be a reader. Based on a wide swath of research and conversations with hundreds of students, we define reading identity as consisting of five aspects: attitude & attribution, self-efficacy, habits, book choice, and process (Scoggin & Schneewind 2021). Engagement and motivation shape and are shaped by reading identity; they are threads that weave through all aspects of identity. For more about our conception of reading identity, please visit our earlier CCIRA blog post.
Students of all ages enter our classrooms already living literate lives. When we commit to a broader view on reading growth, one of our roles is to learn about students as readers and to give students opportunities to learn about themselves. Throughout the year, we can engage in a variety of practices with this goal in mind, such as observing while students pick books, listening in during independent reading, conducting conferences, facilitating class conversations, providing students with language to describe themselves, and offering them opportunities to reflect on their growth. All of this is real data.
Why does reading identity matter?
To teach effectively and responsively, we need to focus both on what we are teaching (the act of reading) and on who is in the classroom (the reader), not just follow a prescribed list of skills and strategies. The research on the positive impact of instruction in the areas of fluency, decoding, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and comprehension (Young, Paige & Rasinski, 2022) is well established; however, if we ignore the affective influences on reading development, we limit our ability to reach all readers. We literally get in the way of student achievement.
Here is a sampling of the research on these affective influences and reading identity:
- Attribution, how students feel and the stories they tell about themselves, impacts reading achievement (Frijter et al, 2018).
- Self-efficacy refers to our belief in our capacity to set goals and be successful in reaching those goals (Bandura 1986). Readers with high self-efficacy approach texts with confidence and are ready to take on challenges, whereas readers with low self-efficacy tend to get frustrated which in turn, makes them less confident.
- Motivation and engagement strongly influence reading development and achievement (Afflerbach, 2022, Fisher, Frey, and Quaglia, 2018).
- Duke (2021) warns that we ignore the scientific research on motivation for reading at our peril.
We need to attend to both reading and reader for all students to thrive.
How can teachers positively impact students’ evolving reading identities?
When we commit to a more expansive definition of reading growth, our teaching includes uncovering students’ reading identities as well as intentionally supporting and nurturing students’ evolving sense of self as readers. For students who see themselves positively as readers, we can encourage them to set their own goals, challenge themselves to read differently, and tell themselves stories with new possibilities. For students who feel negatively about themselves as readers, we cannot make a student change or erase past reading traumas; however, we can design experiences for students that allows students to feel joyful and confident. This includes explicit instruction in areas such as decoding and fluency and includes explicit instruction around areas such as attribution and self-efficacy. We can support them to tell a different, asset-minded story about themselves as readers.
One way to put this into practice is to incorporate the following four teaching moves into our regular feedback practices: affirming, acknowledging, shifting, and expanding. The chart below explains this work and its possibilities.
A Summary of Teacher Moves to Respond to Reading Identity
| Teacher Moves | What it does… | What it might sound like… |
| Affirm | Highlight students’ strengths | “You are a very confident reader who enjoys a variety of genres.” |
| Acknowledge | Validate students’ range of emotions about themselves as readers and about reading | “Right now, you don’t see yourself as a reader. Would you be open to working together to change that?” |
| Expand | Builds on student strengths with explicit instruction | “You already focus on learning about characters. Now, let’s add on that and think about theme. “ |
| Shift | Designs success experiences with explicit instruction | “Did you notice what you just did when you got to that multisyllabic word? A few weeks ago, you might have stopped reading altogether. Today, you tried a few strategies and figured it out. You did that.” |
The definition of reading growth does not have to be limited to mandated assessments. Inside your classroom, you can choose the feedback you give to students about their reading and about being a reader. You can celebrate growth in all its forms. As we enter the second half of the school year, we invite you to embrace and enact a more expansive definition of reading growth. How can you support students to tell a more expansive story about themselves as readers, inviting them to acknowledge their past experiences while creating a hopeful path for their reading future? How can you shift to teaching readers as well as teaching reading? How can you see growth for all readers?
Citations
Afflerbach, P. (2022). Teaching Readers (Not Reading): Moving beyond skills and strategies to reader-focused instruction. The Guilford Press, New York, NY.
Duke, N.K., Ward, A.E., & Pearson, P.D. (2021). The Science of Reading Comprehension Instruction. The ReadingTeacher, 74(6), 663–672. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1993
Frijters, J.C., Tsujimoto, K.C., Boada, R., Gottwald, S., Hill, D., Jacobson, L.A., Lovett, M.W., Mark Mahone, E., Willcutt, E.G., Wolf, M., Bosson-Heenan, J., & Gruen, J.R. (2018). Reading-Related Causal Attributions for Success and Failure: Dynamic Links With Reading Skill. Reading Research Quarterly, 53(1), 127–148. doi:10.1002/rrq.189
Scoggin, J. and Schneewind, H. (2021). Trusting readers: Powerful practices for independent reading. Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH.
Young, C., Paige, D. & Raskinski, T.V. (2022). Artfully teaching the science of reading. Routledge, New York: NY.
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