It's not reading unless you're thinking

Not actually reading. (George Eastman Museum)

To a little kid, reading appears to be the act of passively looking at the page — or maybe turning pages and reciting words out loud as you make up your own story or recite one that has been read to you many times.

I used to “read” my dad’s car magazines by flipping through the pages one at a time (licking a finger on one hand and turning the page with the other), and I would tell the story of naughty Peter Rabbit and his quest to steal “cawwots” while using the picture book to guide my memory.

Eventually, children learn that the marks on the page represent sounds and ideas. But reading silently is an invisible process. Even after someone learns to read, they may not fully understand this process. They may be decoding the words on the page, but their mind is somewhere else. Or they may be grasping the meaning of each word but fail to synthesize the words into the larger idea. This is how someone can spend nine hours studying and have little to show for it. To prevent this, students need to be explicitly taught how to engage with a text and use it to stimulate their thinking.

Reading nonfiction shouldn’t be passive “consumption” of words; it is an active process that sometimes feels like a conversation with oneself. Students do not automatically do this; most need to be taught. In their book The Well-Trained Mind, authors Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer teach parents how to use narration to help develop a child’s ability to process new ideas and put them into their own words. For those of us who are used to doing this, it seems automatic and natural, but it is not that way for everyone.

Students will sometimes balk at the challenge of putting ideas into their own words. “I get it, but I can’t explain it.” This is a normal part of the learning process, but we shouldn’t stop there. The student should reread a paragraph, make notes, and engage with the material until it becomes clear enough to talk about.

Occasionally, we encounter a paragraph that is so complex that it seems impenetrable. In such circumstances, it is a good idea to look for other resources to support the text. For instance, the student could look up unfamiliar words or phrases, seek a simpler explanation of the same topic from another book or article, or find a diagram, map, or graph illustrating the idea being discussed. Experienced learners do these kinds of things automatically, but newer ones may need to be formally instructed to do so.

When a student is engaging at a high level with the material, it is best to break it down and go slowly. A single paragraph can stimulate twenty minutes or more of discussion, summarization, guided note-taking, vocabulary development, and more. Ironically, a paragraph that seemed boring at first becomes more interesting as you go deeper and spend more time with it.

If we’re spending so much time with one paragraph, less is more. Reading ten pages might be counterproductive for a student who is only beginning to learn to read actively. Prioritizing depth will help the student to develop good habits of reflecting on what they read and working to make meaning from it, instead of simply reciting the words.

With practice, students will learn to automatically think while they read. They will reflect, summarize, ask themselves questions, and seek to discuss the writer’s ideas with others. These cognitive processes add depth and dimension to the reading process, and to life itself.