Last week I spoke about the D.E.A.R. reading program – a pastoral initiative where the entire school drops everything and reads for twenty minutes of a Wednesday morning.  I walked around the school last week and this week, and was thrilled to see Maths teachers, Science teachers, History teachers and PE teachers sitting or standing with a book in their hand and reading in silence. The stillness was mesmerising.

The second part of the program began this week with forty-five Year 10 students meeting with half the Year 7 cohort to talk, to share, and to think about books. The other half of the Year 7 cohort will work with these same Year 10 students in the second semester. In preparation for their participation in the reading program, I asked the Year 10s to complete a metacognitive survey about their own reading history and experiences. The word ‘metacognition’ is defined as the process of thinking about thinking. I wanted to assist the Year 10 reading participants to think about how they read. What is happening as they read? What struggles are they encountering and what connections are they making.  My intention here is to encourage these students to reflect upon and evaluate their own reading routines and capacities in the hope of activating the reading capabilities of our younger students.

All formal education – and indeed daily living – involves the act of reading: the ability to decode, interpret, respond to, and make meaning from a range of texts. Years of research have shaped our understanding of the very crucial act of reading. We have come to understand that reading is an active process of making meaning from signs and systems of signs. Words act upon and shape the reader and the reader acts upon and shapes the meaning of the words. We know also that different kinds of reading make different kinds of demands on the reader, and that one thing young readers need to learn is to adjust their reading to the demands of the text. 

Reading is therefore significantly more than a mechanical process involving the decoding of words on a page. It is a thinking process where we establish understanding from the cues in the text made up of letter-sound combinations, word order systems, and the meaning of language.

While teachers undoubtedly want students to read for pleasure, they also want them to engage in critical thinking, metacognition, and dialogue, as well as using writing to extend and to justify personal interpretations. Our D.E.A.R. program will see our Year 7 and 10 students reading for pleasure, engaging in critical thinking, metacognition, and dialogue, and most certainly extending and justifying their personal interpretations by writing.

Clare Murphy

English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach