Abstract:

Bill Ferriter, a North Carolina NBCT, describes how the author and his students came up with nine reasons for reading: it’s rewarding, it builds a mature vocabulary, it makes you smarter, it prepares you for the world of work … and then the author came up with 40 5-to-20-minute “mini-lessons” to emphasize these reasons.

Citation: Ghallager, K. (2003). Reading lessons: Motivational mini-lessons for middle and high school. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Full Text:

Kelly Gallagher
2003 (180 pp./paperback)
Stenhouse Publishers
ISBN: 1-57110-356-2
$21.00

Reviewed by Bill Ferriter
Salem Middle School
Wake County NC Public Schools

Why do you read? What are all of the reasons that reading is important to you as a teacher and as a person? What advantages have you gained in life because of your ability to read fluently and to understand a variety of different text structures? Where would you be without reading?

Perhaps your answers to these questions are much like mine. I read because I enjoy it. Like most voracious readers, I live vicariously through the stories that I pick up. My mind is energized and challenged by the universal themes present in literature.

Reading has also opened many doors for me. College was a breeze because the difficult text presented was easily understood. I've advanced in my career due to my public speaking and writing abilities. Those skills come naturally to anyone having spent half their waking hours in a book, immersed in wonderful language.

To be sure, the reasons for reading are numerous. You can probably detail them as well as I can—but are they apparent to your students? Can the children of your classes answer any of my questions, or do they read simply out of obligation? Is filling out weekly reading logs something more than a task to them? Do they itch to complete book reviews and to participate in literature circles, or are they going through the motions, satisfying the requirements of your class?

Reading is as essential to your students as it has been for you, but few of them know why. Many have lost (or never had to begin with) the joy that good books can provide, and they do not understand how great a loss that is. What's more, the majority of the adults in their lives have never fully explained the benefits of reading. It is as if the importance of reading is a secret revealed only to those who discover it alone.

If reading is going to be reinvented as a worthwhile pursuit in your classroom, this secrecy has to end! It is your job as a teacher to help your children recognize the role that reading plays in their life, and Kelly Gallagher's book Reading Reasons can help you to do that.

Gallagher, a long-time high school English teacher in California, realized one day that few of his students could fully explain the role that reading plays in their lives. Together, he and his students began to outline specific reasons that reading matters. What they came up with was the following list of nine Reading Reasons:

1. Reading is rewarding.
2. Reading builds a mature vocabulary.
3. Reading makes you a better writer.
4. Reading is hard, and "hard" is necessary.
5. Reading makes you smarter.
6. Reading prepares you for the world of work.
7. Reading well is financially rewarding.
8. Reading opens the door to college and beyond.
9. Reading arms you against oppression.

Gallagher then took these ideas and created 40 motivational mini-lessons designed to convince middle and high school students of the importance of reading in their lives. Those mini-lessons have become the core of Reading Reasons.

Each lesson is designed to take between 5 and 20 minutes to teach. They share convincing information about each reading reason and can be implemented in classrooms across the curriculum. Complete with specific directions and all related materials, these reading "booster shots" (as Gallagher describes them) are approachable and easy to use.

Reading Reasons also includes a collection of valuable documents in its appendix. Lists of books appropriate for middle and high school students, samples of letters that can be sent to parents, and reading records that Gallagher has used in his career are all provided for teachers interested in making reading a central part of their classrooms.

In the end, no matter what we teach, each of us wants to instill an appreciation for reading in our students. Reading Reasons helps to make that possible. It is an essential resource that teachers of middle and high school children will find immediately rewarding!

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