Strength: Productive Effort and Building Reading Muscle

At the beginning of the chapter, a story is shared about a mom who pushes her son.  She left him home alone for the first time feeling that he was ready while she attended a workshop and her husband was teaching.  At one point he contacts her upset and says there is an emergency.  After her initial panic, she finds that the “emergency” is that he spilled the gallon of milk and now has a mess and no breakfast.  She tells him where the towels are and pushes him to clean up his mess and find himself breakfast.  He protests but she tells him she’s going to have to do it and says goodbye.  He is proud of himself 30 minutes later when he texts her that he did it!

Life with our students can be much like this; if we don’t push them to try it on their own, they will rely on our support more than necessary.

Teaching Students How to Select Texts

This chapter was about building our muscles as readers.  Your brain gets stronger as you try things that are more difficult for you.  The authors discouraged against some of the “just right” book strategies many of us use such as the “five finger test”.  If students don’t even try those 5 words, are they really exercising their brains for growth?

Different books are “just right” for different purposes.  While a book may be high-interest and easy to comprehend, it isn’t great for stretching our muscles.  It is great, however, for making us love reading and increase fluency.  This was a new way of looking at “just right” for me.  I have been guilty of encouraging a child to try a “harder book” to grow them as a reader, when, in reality, that “easy” book may be helping them grow a love a reading.  Growing a love of reading should be our ultimate goal, so from this point forward, “go for it kiddo!”.  

The authors talked about 4 different “weights of texts” and how these texts grow us as readers.

Reading Wellness Intentions

As you have seen in the previous posts, it always comes back to the Reading Wellness Intentions.  Here is how Strength fits into that model. 

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