Reading Reconsidered: A Practical Guide to Rigorous Literacy Instruction

Lemov, Woolway, and Driggs believe that reading instruction needs a serious makeover. They argue that current literacy instruction delegates too much choice to students amid "benignly appealing youth fiction written after 1980" while nonfiction and older fiction texts (the stuff of college) are a mere afterthought. The authors call on educators to focus on "the core of the core": harder texts, close reading, more nonfiction, and frequent writing in response to reading as the main approach to ameliorate declining SAT scores. Part 1 details this instructional core, while part 2 gets into the nitty-gritty of teaching strategies: vocabulary instruction, approaches to "independent" reading, text annotation, and more. Each chapter is broken into discrete modules for study and implementation, accompanied by a collection of videos from the classrooms of UnCommon School teachers. The authors clearly demonstrate a respect for teachers and students. With many references to E.D. Hirsch, readers may be concerned that a revival of the traditional canon is on the horizon. However, the authors advocate for an "internal canon" selected purposefully by teachers. While many of the strategies are supported by relevant research in the field, there is scant reference made to research on the importance of student choice in reading.