Title: The Art of Slow Reading:
Six Time-Honored Practices for Engagement
Authors: Thomas Newkirk
Publisher:Heinemann
Date: 2011
ISBN: 978-0325037318
Pages: 224
Two
dear teaching friends recommended this book to me. They have been
completing a collaborative study of the book together and found a lot
of “meaty” ideas in this book that have translated into their own
teaching practice and then their articulation of practice. Using a
reading workshop approach in their classes, these teachers have
slowed down to read with their students and incorporated the six
time-honored practices that Newkirk advocates. As I browsed through
the table of contents, I can't say I was surprised by his suggestions
of how to slow down and appreciate reading and learn more from
reading, but like Burke's Reading Reminders and Writing Reminders, it
is always good to be reminded of good habits!
Why slow down?
The first part of the book makes the case for slowing down our
reading to hear the author's voice, focus on single ideas, be in
dialogue with the text/author and do more than just comprehend the
text, but internalize and act on text. Newkirks traces the history
of our current reading curriculum that values “fluency”,
otherwise known as fast reading, over expressive and aesthetic
reading. “To read a book . . . is an act of perseverance” (p.
36) in that the reader has to attend to the words, plot and context
over time. Too often, we have a dueling consciousness – awareness
of the time we are in while thinking about the time we are planning
to be in. We have become so accustomed to the time pressures of
school – timed tests, unit plans etc. - that we accept is as part
of life along with the underlying ideologies that faster is better
and the Bell Curve of ability. However, “being slow means that you
control the rhythms of your own life” (p. 24 quoted from Carlo Petrini of the International Slow Food Movement) and it allows readers to get aesthetic appreciation and
personal pleasure and connections from their reading, rather than a
process of retrieval of information. Newkirk than re-animates six
time-honored practices of slow reading.
Performance
- Oral storytelling has been the foundational method of teaching
and learning throughout the world and ages. Even with the advent of
writing and the printing press, texts were still often read aloud and
reading was a truly social event with essays, poetry, and readings
being a highlight of any party. Silent reading is a relatively new
phenomenon. O'Brien (1922) identified three types of readers –
motor, who physically formed the words; auditory, who mentally
imagined the formed words; and visual, who imagined the content of
the words. The visual reader was more efficient, which began the
movement to silence vocalization of reading. Efficiency was then
linked to measurement (timed tests and DIBELS) and a belief the
meaning is inherent in the text. However, Newkirk argues that it
isn't the technical qualities of texts (like structure, thesis and
transitions) that engage readers, it is the voice of the author. To
slow down and focus on this voice, performance of reading needs to be
re-introduced.
Memorization –
Memorizing a passage or poem
allows the reader to mediate on it and it becomes part of the reader.
Most religious traditions take advantage of this method to help the
novices think deeper about religious texts. Newkirk provides several
examples of classroom lessons focusing on memorization through
repetition by researching family proverbs/sayings or by encouraging
students to learn and tell jokes. From my own experience, I would
have to agree with Newkirk that there is value in memorizing texts
that are personally meaningful. When I was in Army Basic Training,
it shocked me how I was able to recall the things I memorized during
childhood and this sustained and supported me through 10 mile hikes
and 5 am PT runs.
Annotation
– By annotating and marking up a text, the reader is taking
responsibility for determining the meaning of the text. Writing is an
intentional act with cues given in the title, openings, scenes,
descriptions and subheadings. As readers, we need to pay attention
to the cues. But, texts are not determinate – we will not get the
exact intention of the writer, who may have had multiple intentions.
Different readers find different patterns of significance (p. 117).
Making the text your own by marking it up, allows the reader to have
this dialogue with the writer. In educationese this is often called
“active reading”.
Problematizing
- “I am convinced that a crucial measure of intelligence – and by
extension, reading – is the ability to work through
this initial discomfort of situations that don't make sense, when our
habitual patterns of understanding don't do the job” (pp. 119-120).
When a reader gets to a difficult text, there are generally two
choices – give up or struggle and find a solution. When a reader
has learned to be helpless – ie the problem is a deficit in me,
this deficit is unchangeable, and it is global – then, often the
reader will give up. However, with a mind-set that intelligence is
not something you have,
but something you do
then difficulties are opportunities to stop, reassess, and employ
strategies for making sense of the problem.
Reading
like a Writer
– “Writing is, after all, an act of slow reading” (p. 10).
Writers tend to be slow readers, like Francine Prose and her
wonderful book, ReadingLike a Writer.
Writers will savor and then deconstruct a great text to find out
what makes it work. Again, Newkirk gives a few classroom examples of
lessons. For example, giving students a text full of voice and
de-voicing it (making it ordinary) or re-writing but just changing
the punctuation.
Writing
about Text
- “We rarely simply comprehend,
a word with root meanings of “grasp” or “hold. We act on it in
some way – we explain it, teach it, quote it, perform it, evaluate
it, analyze it, allow it to call up associated experiences and ideas.
We create alongside the writer” (p. 170). Writing in response to
reading fills in the white space between the words – that empty
space that is filled with what the reader brings to the text.
Newkirk evokes Johnston's (Choice
Words,2004) prompts that extend thinking:
- Alternative thinking – What else? What other ways?
- Empathizing – How do you think she/he felt?
- Causation – Why?
- Hypothesizing/speculating – I wonder … What if?
- Comparing – It's like …
When
it comes down to it, we read for pleasure and meaning. Everything
else - testing, career or global competitiveness etc. - is
tangential. However, when those other things become the focus, the
meaning and pleasure of reading is discarded. Which results in a
situation where, “If we teach a child to read, yet develop not the
taste for reading, all of our teaching is for naught. We shall have
produced a nation of ‘illiterate literates’–those who know how
to read but do not read” (Huck, 1973, p.305).
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