Reading like a Reader, Reading like a Writer

Photo by Syd Wachs on Unsplash

This summer, I spent three thought-provoking days learning from fellow teachers at Inland Area Writing Project (IAWP) summer workshops on the UCR campus. When I signed up, I was excited to take new writing techniques and ideas back to my classroom to assist with my writing instruction. I had no idea that these workshops would change my approach to teaching literacy as a whole. The workshop teachers (all real life teachers and college professors) had great ideas for teaching writing, but one notion was mentioned again and again by all of them was- "Read like a reader, read like a writer." Now, I don't know if I've been living under a rock for my entire teaching career, but this was a novel idea to me. I started researching this 'Read like a reader, read like a writer,' and what I found made me eager to get back into the classroom and try it out!

Taking the strategies from the workshop and into the classroom

Like most teachers, I instantly started thinking about not WHAT I was going to teach but HOW. I started reading some of my favorite short stories through both lenses. The first time I read as a reader. During this read, I'd concentrate on what my mind was doing while reading (metacognition). I'd also annotate my thinking on the page. Then, I'd reread the same passage through the lens of a writer. I'd look at the details the author added about the character's house and the purposeful varied sentence structure. I noticed things that I didn't see the first time I read, but found myself clueless as to how I'd teach my students how to practice these new strategies.  

It's an art and craft kind of thing. Reading like a reader is art, 

immersing myself in the story and losing sight of the world. 

reading like a writer is craft, paying attention to the structure, 

picking things apart so I can learn. 

-Sandy Fussell

During my research, I found the work of Steve Peha of the website Teaching that Makes Sense most comprehensive. Below is my plan on how to introduce this new thinking to my students:

1. Steve Peha's document starts by defining what it really means to read like a reader and read like a writer. I feel like my students will need this information to understand the journey I'm taking them on this year. • Reading like a reader. We might think of this as the "normal" way of reading where we try to figure out what a piece of writing means by understanding the words a writer is using. But even this "normal" way is more complicated than it seems. • Reading like a writer. When we read from the perspective of a writer, we focus less on what the writer is trying to say and more on how the writer is saying it. Specifically, we look at the techniques the writer is using to get his or her message across and how those techniques affect us as we experience the text.
2. Introduce annotating- Because I teach 6th grade, I know I'll need to explicitly teach this skill, so my students will understand what my expectations are and will be of them in the future. To introduce annotating, I will be using the list of six things Peha believes that all readers do: predict, question, infer, feel, connect, and evaluate. I'm predicting that this step will take a couple of weeks to teach.
3. Finally, I will be introducing "Read like a Writer" to my students. Peha uses the six traits of writing for this step: organization, ideas, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. My thought is to do this using mentor texts multiple times before and during the writing process.

This is all a plan and a work in progress. If you have any tips or experience with using Read like a reader-writer in the classroom, please share! I can use all the help I can get. 

Follow along to see how our writing transforms, 

Jenni Merry