We’ve had some good discussions as of late, especially with students who have previously not done that reading homework. So, I’ve stressed the importance to my students to just try to do the reading and come in with questions. Chances are somebody else was struggling with the same thing. So, we can work together as a class to discuss these problems and do close readings to help everybody understand. It’s just difficult – and even just plain frustrating – when I can’t get students to attempt it in the first place.

And as a side note, I’ve used a couple of the activities in your With Rigor for All book that you suggest as alternatives to reading quizzes.

I think challenging texts are often vehicles for teaching reading skills. What is even more important to me is that by creating lessons that scaffold their reading of difficult literature like Beowulf, teacher provide access to rich and wonderful works that would otherwise be impossible for students to read on their own (How many of us did?). Powerful literature isn’t written the way it is to make reading hard but to express complex ideas artfully. It’s worth the trouble!

Best/ Carol

Take a look at what I said to Nichole below. I think creating a classroom atmosphere where students and teacher work together is a good strategy. Work with them early to give them the confidence that they can actually read and understand the difficult texts.

Something we did was create a running list of vocabulary words on a piece of poster paper. We would use this as a cumulative reference for all class periods. If we came across a word that we weren’t familiar with during a close reading, we’d look it up and put it on our poster. All of my students have laptops so a Google search isn’t time-consuming. If you don’t have that technology available, you could just use a dictionary, I’m sure.

I also worked toward making myself not look like a know-it-all in front of the class. Sometimes we’d come across a word that I didn’t even know and would say, “Yes, it’s a difficult text. And, look, we’ve come across a word that I’m not even familiar with. So, instead of giving up, let’s work through this together, look up the word and carry on with our close reading.”

The biggest thing, then, is to work with them and constantly reiterate that we can use each other to learn about a new and difficult text. If a three different people were able to pick out three different things in a passage, then we can use that collectively to reach a conclusion.

Hope this helps.