Closing the Reading Gap — Julian Girdham

For English teachers, one of the most helpful and important books of recent years is Alex Quigley’s Closing the Vocabulary Gap, an insightful analysis of this foundational matter in all education. I recommended it strongly during my INOTE keynote presentation last October. Alex spoke on this subject at researchED Dublin a week beforehand.

Now comes Closing the Reading Gap, in which Alex Quigley addresses another core issue for all teachers, and which of course has a symbiotic relationship with the previous volume.

Both books are written in a very accessible way, translating much deep research into helpful terms for classroom practitioners at both primary and secondary level, and the Notes at the end of each chapter provide valuable routes to further reading. Closing the Reading Gap moves fluently from the history of reading, through the science of how we read, and on to comprehension and barriers to reading, with a welcome emphasis later on subject disciplines (too often ‘reading’ and ‘literacy’ are misguidedly seen as the bailiwicks of English Departments) and finally lots of practical strategies.

Some observations, and quotations:

‘Small, daily acts of reading matter’ (3). Habits are crucial, and they start in the home (see Meghan Cox Gurdon’s The Enchanted Hour: the miraculous power of reading aloud in the age of distraction). But schools can also encourage and build in habits (watch Kenny Pieper’s excellent presentation ‘There’s more to life than books you know, but not much more’).
The problem of the ‘curse of knowledge’ for all fluent adult readers: ‘it can be too easy to miscalibrate the reading challenge faced by our less-experienced pupils.’ All subject teachers really need some awareness of disciplinary literacy: as he says’ ‘Helping pupils to strategically read a science textbook requires careful and knowledgeable instruction.’ (11)
‘The necessary practice of reading extended, complex texts’ (13). Absolutely: we do no favours to pupils at any point of the ability range if we don’t challenge them help them access texts which stretch.
‘Reading proves the master skill of school’ (15). My feeling is that few parents or pupils, and relatively few teachers, are aware of this. ‘Reading’ is seen as something that happens in the Library, in English class, after other work is done, a kind of pleasurable bolt-on, like some sort of academic ice-cream treat.
‘For the majority of children, they’ll still require lots of strategic instruction to learn to read and to go on to “read to learn”. It will likely prove more than we assume, for longer than we expect.’ (45). For teachers like me, steeped in books for decades, whose houses are full of books, and whose families are readers, this is easy to forget.
‘Of course, for a teenager who struggles, to read, they can be hardened by successive failures. Each daily loss in the classroom can leave any notion of reading for pleasure in tatters.’ (60). Depressingly true (again, check out Kenny Pieper’s talk).
Alex Quigley is very good on ‘inference making’, particularly in the chapter ‘Reading Comprehension’, another area in which we have to be particularly careful of the curse of knowledge.
There is a lot of important material in the chapter ‘Reading Barriers’, particularly on children who struggle.
‘What we can agree on about reading in English is that we are not hunting for logic, like in science and mathematics, but instead there is a search for ambiguity, with singular interpretations being actively resisted when reading literature. This can be a shock for novice readers.’ (147). Every English teacher should recognise this: ambiguity is our calling card, but pupils come into our classrooms straight from lessons in which it is alien.
Chapter 7 has lots of ‘Practical strategies for closing the reading gap.’ ‘Love thy library’: I am lucky to work in a school which has a superb library and a superb librarian, but so many schools are under-provided (or have nothing).

Finally, close to the end: ‘We can, and should, be passionate about reading for both pleasure and purpose. We should be passionate about communicating the big ideas of our subject disciplines and the best that has been though and said in our culture. But being passionate about reading will not be enough.’ (198). It is this emphasis on this mixture of passion and deliberate determined pedagogical practice that makes Closing the Reading Gap such a welcome book.