Is reading stressful for kids?

These past couple of weeks I have been trying to read "The Golden Compass" by Phillip Pullman as a recommendation from my boyfriend as a crucial part I missed in my childhood.  While the story is very intriguing and captures my attention there are so many other things going on throughout the day that it is so hard to read more than 3 pages at a time before falling asleep.  I wonder if this is how kids feel when we throw multiple texts, tough content, learning reading strategies, not knowing all the words, and being asked so many questions about a book.  Not to mention the idea that we are expecting them to read texts that they may not be interested in.

When developing my literacy action plan I really had to take this idea into account because the texts we choose to use in our classrooms can really impact the growth we see in our students.  The new curriculum guides in Hillsborough County provide resources and instructional focuses that help students toward mastering the standards.  We have started using our close reading modules about every 4 weeks and it has really shown me that if we set the expectations high, students are willing to set everything else aside and do their best.

“Close reading must be accompanied by other essential instructional practices that are vital to reading development: interactive read-alouds and shared readings, teacher modeling and think-alouds.” (Fischer & Frey, p.180)  This tells me that kids need the variety of multiple texts in order to keep their attention while us as adults can't always make the time to read different types of text.

What we hope it's like...

What it may be like...

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2012). Close Reading In Elementary Schools. The Reading Teacher, 66(3), 179-188.