Professional Book Review: Disrupting Thinking

In addition to reviewing children's, young adult, and adult books, I think it is important to help teachers and education scholars find quality texts to improve their practice. Today, I'm sharing my first professional book review. 

I had been hearing about this title for a while, so I requested it through my university's library system and spent the next month slowly reading it. I think professional books should be read slowly so that the ideas have time to marinade. 

Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters by Kylene Beers & Robert E. Probst

The main premise of this book is that the way reading has conventionally been taught does not always encourage and motivate children to continue reading. Specifically, somewhere along the way, it was decided that children should be questioned after they read. Today, children read a book and immediately have to answer several questions about the text. I don't know about you, but I would find this very unmotivating. As a reader, I read for many reasons, but being able to correctly answer questions isn't one of them. Moreover, I may not remember every detail of the text, but I do remember things that mattered to me and how I felt as I read. Those are more motivating than remembering arbitrary details. 

I like Disrupting Thinking because it helps teachers follow a framework for introducing literature in their classrooms and helping students read with motivation. Interestingly, when children are motivated to read, they often do better on comprehension based tasks. The text also encourages teachers to let children show their knowledge through different measures, such as book talks, creative experiences, and dialogue. Again, the goal is to mirror how readers engage with text when they are not being tested in a school setting. 

One critic I do have of this text, is that I would have preferred to see more strategies for engaging students in reading and helping promote motivation. The authors really centered their discussion on a framework they developed. While I believe this is a good framework, I just expected more hands-on strategies that teachers could take and use in their classrooms. 

Overall, I recommend this book for literacy professionals who are looking for ways to vary their reading instruction and focus on motivating readers. 

Happy Reading!!