This reminds me of something Csikszentmihalyi talks about in his book Flow.
Something crucial in helping us achieve a flow state when engaging in an activity is the balance between our skill level and the difficulty we’re facing. Experiences tend to be most enjoyable when we have a good balance between how challenging something is and how capable we are at meeting that challenge. If there’s an imbalance, we either get too bored or too frustrated.
But here’s the twist: Many activities involve an imbalance when we’re starting out. They’re too hard relative to our skill level. So we need to persist to to develop a base competence level to start being able to truly enjoy the activity. Maybe we see a similar thing with reading.
Well--we learn a lot from our own children, don't we? Though in my case, it's my son who found reading easy who doesn't 'love' it, and the one who didn't who is now a voracious reader. I explore all the points you make in Can We Inspire a Love of Reading? (https://harriettjanetos.substack.com/p/can-we-inspire-a-love-of-reading?r=5spuf). Thanks for making them so elegantly!
Thank you so much Harriet for reading and just read your post...wow, we are birds of a feather and share a brain on this topic! Loved getting your insights and analysis here too.
Agree wholeheartedly that our job is to teach kids HOW to read (and do math, and learn science and social studies) not to love it. So I will say that I love this post!
Thanks Ed! Yes, for my little guy adding that competition element was HUGE as you read. I love the post I embedded from Cynthia Nebel, which I think helps explain the science behind why competition appeals to so many (and as it seems, for many little boys in particular!)
Love this column, and all of its broader themes. Welcome to Substack!
I have just one point of exception: I don't think we can endorse Shanahan's take on books. If we honor the research about volume of reading and its importance to growing reading skills and vocabulary (which you rightly surface), we quickly confront a practical reality: teachers can't realistically deliver a high volume of reading in a curriculum full of passages. They just can't. It's an operational hurdle: The 'switching costs' of ping-ponging between passages is too high (in teacher talk time, in cognitive load).
Heck, Wonders itself (the program Shanahan authored) illustrates the issue. Wonders Grade 6 has a total of 463 pages of content in the whole curriculum. The average passage is just 7.3 pages and the longest passage is 15 pages. How does anyone fall in love when the excerpt is truncated after 15 pages? Sixth graders should be reading longer stretches and >463 pages, and I will die on that hill.
Fine, someone can learn to read at some very basic level of proficiency via passages, if we allow basic (4th grade-ish) reading skills to be the bar. But a Wonders-size diet of passages won't nurture the advanced skills we all want for upper grade success.
Further, passage-only literacy cannot build reading stamina, and I am certain research will bear this out. Because apparently we need research to prove the obvious nowadays. (Le Sigh.) Fortunately, Congress is talking about a Do-Over for the NRP, so maybe we can get that research! More on that in my latest: https://www.karenvaites.org/p/the-science-of-reading-goes-to-washington
I have a ton of respect for Tim, and his writing is all over my own work. But I'm certain he's wrong about this, and I think it's OK to say that plainly. Important, even.
Thank you for writing, and can't wait for your next post!
“Proficiency has to come first. My son couldn’t have experienced joy in Battle of the Books without years of explicit instruction and deliberate practice that built his reading skills.”Would you share examples of the explicit instruction to reach proficiency?
This reminds me of something Csikszentmihalyi talks about in his book Flow.
Something crucial in helping us achieve a flow state when engaging in an activity is the balance between our skill level and the difficulty we’re facing. Experiences tend to be most enjoyable when we have a good balance between how challenging something is and how capable we are at meeting that challenge. If there’s an imbalance, we either get too bored or too frustrated.
But here’s the twist: Many activities involve an imbalance when we’re starting out. They’re too hard relative to our skill level. So we need to persist to to develop a base competence level to start being able to truly enjoy the activity. Maybe we see a similar thing with reading.
Well--we learn a lot from our own children, don't we? Though in my case, it's my son who found reading easy who doesn't 'love' it, and the one who didn't who is now a voracious reader. I explore all the points you make in Can We Inspire a Love of Reading? (https://harriettjanetos.substack.com/p/can-we-inspire-a-love-of-reading?r=5spuf). Thanks for making them so elegantly!
Thank you so much Harriet for reading and just read your post...wow, we are birds of a feather and share a brain on this topic! Loved getting your insights and analysis here too.
Agree wholeheartedly that our job is to teach kids HOW to read (and do math, and learn science and social studies) not to love it. So I will say that I love this post!
Thank you so much Lauren! I am so grateful for your work and reflections on learning here too!
Oh, thank you!!
Competition has exactly been on my mind the past few days. But I’d never heard of this org!
Can’t wait to dig in.
And interesting point about competition, too!
Thanks Ed! Yes, for my little guy adding that competition element was HUGE as you read. I love the post I embedded from Cynthia Nebel, which I think helps explain the science behind why competition appeals to so many (and as it seems, for many little boys in particular!)
Love this column, and all of its broader themes. Welcome to Substack!
I have just one point of exception: I don't think we can endorse Shanahan's take on books. If we honor the research about volume of reading and its importance to growing reading skills and vocabulary (which you rightly surface), we quickly confront a practical reality: teachers can't realistically deliver a high volume of reading in a curriculum full of passages. They just can't. It's an operational hurdle: The 'switching costs' of ping-ponging between passages is too high (in teacher talk time, in cognitive load).
Heck, Wonders itself (the program Shanahan authored) illustrates the issue. Wonders Grade 6 has a total of 463 pages of content in the whole curriculum. The average passage is just 7.3 pages and the longest passage is 15 pages. How does anyone fall in love when the excerpt is truncated after 15 pages? Sixth graders should be reading longer stretches and >463 pages, and I will die on that hill.
Fine, someone can learn to read at some very basic level of proficiency via passages, if we allow basic (4th grade-ish) reading skills to be the bar. But a Wonders-size diet of passages won't nurture the advanced skills we all want for upper grade success.
Further, passage-only literacy cannot build reading stamina, and I am certain research will bear this out. Because apparently we need research to prove the obvious nowadays. (Le Sigh.) Fortunately, Congress is talking about a Do-Over for the NRP, so maybe we can get that research! More on that in my latest: https://www.karenvaites.org/p/the-science-of-reading-goes-to-washington
I have a ton of respect for Tim, and his writing is all over my own work. But I'm certain he's wrong about this, and I think it's OK to say that plainly. Important, even.
Thank you for writing, and can't wait for your next post!
“Proficiency has to come first. My son couldn’t have experienced joy in Battle of the Books without years of explicit instruction and deliberate practice that built his reading skills.”Would you share examples of the explicit instruction to reach proficiency?