Lucy McCormick Calkins: The Art of Teaching Reading
Reviewed by Merri Rosenberg
The Art of Teaching Reading
by Lucy McCormick Calkins
Published by Longman, New York
(2001, Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc),
580 Pages
When Lucy McCormick Calkins speaks about how to teach reading and writing, it's as if God himself—or at least Moses—were talking. After all, Calkins, as the founder of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, has become the go-to educator expert for helping children become better and more enthusiastic readers and writers. Through the Teachers College project, Calkins has developed disciples at more than 200 schools during the past 15 years, who've embraced her research and methods for building literate classrooms. My own daughter, now a high school senior, participated in a Calkins «writing seed' project when she was in third grade, producing a memorable 50-page opus at the end of the experience.In this volume, Calkins shifts her attention, slightly, from developing writers to developing readers. It's a subtle distinction, but a critical one—and especially relevant as teachers must help their students prepare for a myriad of standardized tests and assessments that measure reading ability.Her manifesto, such as it is, urges teachers to pursue the following mission: "Each one of us must, in our classroom, author a comprehensive approach to teaching reading," with the goal of leading students to become people who choose to read.Calkins addresses such issues as leveled books, literature circles and literature logs, guided reading, running records and writing workshops, among others, as well as the reality of standardized tests and assessments. She discusses the benefits of book clubs, and offers specific strategies teachers can use to implement successful models in their own classrooms. Calkins even acknowledges that reading responses, practically a Bible for many teachers, has too often been corrupted and trivialized into a "trinket." As she says, "In the whole scheme of things, why does it matter whether a child can repeat back the teacher's interpretation of a text?"Underlying nearly all the chapters is her strong conviction that teaching is an art, that teachers shouldn't be micro-managed in how they do their jobs in their classroom, and that teachers do their students the most good by being passionate about what they're teaching. She suggests, for example, that teachers read books to their students that "you love with all your heart"—the idea being"...when a book creates a lump in the throat and a shiver down the spine, I want readers to know they can talk, write and live differently as a result." What makes this book invaluable to a classroom teacher (whom Calkins acknowledges throughout the text, saying " In the end, the teaching of reading happens in small intimate moments when we pull our chairs alongside a child who is reading or struggling to read") are the many tangible examples that Calkins provides, of how students actually engage with a particular book or exercise. She also offers comprehensive appendices that include lists of read-aloud books, and leveled reading suggestions that could be incorporated into a classroom teacher's reading curriculum. It's not so much having students grouped by reading abilities, says Calkins, as having students find their comfort zones when they read so that what they read is accessible, and enjoyable.Few would dispute Calkins' conviction that, "Like you, I cannot imagine anything in all the world more important than helping kids live lives in which reading and writing matter." Hundreds of pages later, she returns to that point, writing, "as important it is for kids to compose essays, memoirs and responses to literature, it is even more important for them to compose lives in which reading and writing matter."Armed with this thoughtful, persuasive and comprehensive guide, it would be difficult for any teacher not to do just that for her students.#
