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Textual Healing is a season that explores the benefits of reading for mental health. Look out for stories on BBC Culture, BBC Reel and BBC Future and join BBC Culture's Facebook group Textual Healing for more.

Every day more than 1.8 million books are sold in the US and another half a million books are sold in the UK. Despite all the other easy distractions available to us today, there's no doubt that many people still love reading. Books can teach us plenty about the world, of course, as well as improving our vocabularies and writing skills. But can fiction also make us better people?

The claims for fiction are great. It's been credited with everything from an increase in volunteering and charitable giving to the tendency to vote - and even with the gradual decrease in violence over the centuries.

Characters hook us into stories. Aristotle said that when we watch a tragedy two emotions predominate: pity (for the character) and fear (for yourself). Without necessarily even noticing, we imagine what it's like to be them and compare their reactions to situations with how we responded in the past, or imagine we might in the future.

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This exercise in perspective-taking is like a training course in understanding others. The Canadian cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley calls fiction "the mind's flight simulator". Just as pilots can practise flying without leaving the ground, people who read fiction may improve their social skills each time they open a novel. In his research, he has found that as we begin to identify with the characters, we start to consider their goals and desires instead of our own. When they are in danger, our hearts start to race. We might even gasp. But we read with luxury of knowing that none of this is happening to us. We don't wet ourselves with terror or jump out of windows to escape.

Having said that, some of the neural mechanisms the brain uses to make sense of narratives in stories do share similarities with those used in real-life situations. If we read the word "kick", for example, areas of the brain related to physically kicking are activated. If we read that a character pulled a light cord, activity increases in the region of the brain associated with grasping.

To follow a plot, we need to know who knows what, how they feel about it and what each character believes others might be thinking. This requires the skill known as "theory of mind". When people read about a character's thoughts, areas of the brain associated with theory of mind are activated.

With all this practise in empathising with other people through reading, you would think it would be possible to demonstrate that those who read fiction have better social skills than those who read mostly non-fiction or don't read at all.

The difficulty with conducting this kind of research is that many of us have a tendency to exaggerate the number of books we've read. To get around this, Oatley and colleagues gave students a list of fiction and non-fiction writers and asked them to indicate which writers they had heard of. They warned them that a few fake names had been thrown in to check they weren't lying. The number of writers people have heard of turns out to be a good proxy for how much they actually read.

Next, Oatley's team gave people the "Mind in the Eyes" test, where you are given a series of photographs of pairs of eyes. From the eyes and surrounding skin alone, your task is to divine which emotion a person is feeling. You are given a short list of options like shy, guilty, daydreaming or worried. The expressions are subtle and at first glance might appear neutral, so it's harder than it sounds. But those deemed to have read more fiction than non-fiction scored higher on this test - as well as on a scale measuring interpersonal sensitivity.

At the Princeton Social Neuroscience Lab, psychologist Diana Tamir has demonstrated that people who often read fiction have better social cognition. In other words, they're more skilled at working out what other people are thinking and feeling. Using brain scans, she has found that while reading fiction, there is more activity in parts of the default mode network of the brain that are involved in simulating what other people are thinking.

People who read novels appear to be better than average at reading other people's emotions, but does that necessarily make them better people? To test this, researchers at used a method many a psychology student has tried at some point, where you "accidentally" drop a bunch of pens on the floor and then see who offers to help you gather them up. Before the pen-drop took place participants were given a mood questionnaire interspersed with questions measuring empathy. Then they read a short story and answered a series of questions about to the extent they had felt transported while reading the story. Did they have a vivid mental picture of the characters? Did they want to learn more about the characters after they'd finished the story?

The experimenters then said they needed to fetch something from another room and, oops, dropped six pens on the way out. It worked: the people who felt the most transported by the story and expressed the most empathy for the characters were more likely to help retrieve the pens.

You might be wondering whether the people who cared the most about the characters in the story were the kinder people in the first place - as in, the type of people who would offer to help others. But the authors of the study took into account people's scores for empathy and found that, regardless, those who were most transported by the story behaved more altruistically.

Of course, experiments are one thing. Before we extrapolate to wider society we need to be careful about the direction of causality. There is always the possibility that in real life, people who are more empathic in the first place are more interested in other people's interior lives and that this interest draws them towards reading fiction. It's not an easy topic to research: the ideal study would involving measuring people's empathy levels, randomly allocating them either to read numerous novels or none at all for many years, and then measuring their empathy levels again to see whether reading novels had made any difference.

Instead, short-term studies have been done. For example, Dutch researchers arranged for students to read either newspaper articles about riots in Greece and liberation day in the Netherlands or the first chapter from Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's novel Blindness. In this story, a man is waiting in his car at traffic lights when he suddenly goes blind. His passengers bring him home and a passer-by promises to drive his car home for him, but instead he steals it. When students read the story, not only did their empathy levels rise immediately afterwards, but provided they had felt emotionally transported by the story, a week later they scored even higher on empathy than they did right after reading.

Of course, you could argue that fiction isn't alone in this. We can empathise with people we see in news stories too, and hopefully we often do. But fiction has at least three advantages. We have access to the character's interior world in a way we normally do not with journalism, and we are more likely to willingly suspend disbelief without questioning the veracity of what people are saying. Finally, novels allow us to do something that is hard to do in our own lives, which is to view a character's life over many years.

So the research shows that perhaps reading fiction does make people behave better. Certainly some institutions consider the effects of reading to be so significant that they now include modules on literature. At the University of California Irvine, for example, Johanna Shapiro from the Department of Family Medicine firmly believes that reading fiction results in better doctors and has led the establishment of a humanities programme to train medical students.

It sounds as though it's time to lose the stereotype of the shy bookworm whose nose is always in a book because they find it difficult to deal with real people. In fact, these bookworms might be better than everyone else at understanding human beings.
Textual Healing is a season that explores the benefits of reading for mental health. Look out for stories on BBC Culture, BBC Reel and BBC Future and join BBC Culture's Facebook group Textual Healing for more.
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Does reading fiction make us better people?

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Reading fiction has been said to increase people's empathy and compassion. But does the research really bear that out?

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Literacy is the Answer | John Trischitti | TEDxACU

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By Miss Silvester, Head of English
Margaret Fuller's statement about reading and leadership is one of optimism and pragmatism. An early feminist and one of the most prominent literary figures from the nineteenth century, Fuller hoped for a better and more enlightened world in the future, and had a firm belief that reading was central to achieving this.

As an English teacher in 2021, I firmly believe in the importance of picking up a book from academic, social and wellbeing perspectives. Escaping into a book opens up a whole world of possibilities, showing us different cultures and allowing the imagination to run free - something that an age of technology does not always permit with quite the same freedom. To me, there is nothing better than curling up, opening up the first page and switching off from the rest of the world. This is partly what has inspired our #StopDropRead campaign, where the entire school will pause on World Book Day (Thursday 4th March) to take some time to read purely for pleasure.

There has also been a surge of reading in lockdown. According to the Reading Agency, 31% of people surveyed said that they were reading more during lockdown than they did before, with a particular spike being seen amongst younger people. In an ironic twist, books about fictional epidemics saw a huge increase in sales during 2020, with some sales up by over 1000%. I'm personally more of a fan of the classics so probably wouldn't recommend books about pandemics during a pandemic, but the joy of literature is that there is something for everyone.

This view on the benefits of reading is not just an anecdotal observation to try and encourage everyone to go to their local bookshop as soon as they are open again. A government commissioned by the Education Standards research team mapped out several of the key benefits of reading for pleasure. Their findings on this include that there is a positive relationship between reading frequency, reading enjoyment and attainment. The study also showed that reading for pleasure can help with: text comprehension and grammar, a positive attitude to reading, increased general knowledge, pleasure of reading in later life.

If you are thinking 'well, of course an English teacher would want us to read', then you are partially correct. However, reading for pleasure is truly cross-curricular. Below are some thoughts from across a range of NHEHS departments who share their reading habits and what they believe the benefits of reading can be. So go and pick up a book. You know you want to....

I read every night before bed as it helps me to fall asleep. Not because I read boring books, but because reading takes me out of my own head, into another world. I love dystopian novels, especially those by Margaret Atwood such as the Oryx and Crake trilogy.

Reading has helped me hugely since last year. It helps me keep in touch with a very good friend of mine, as we exchange books. It turns out we have very similar taste. Social media and screen time can be very addictive. They hook us up. But there is nothing like being hooked by a book! It is satisfying and captivating. And the sense of accomplishment is so much greater.

Books have taught me a lot about history, psychology, current affairs, and life in general.

My most recent reads to name a few that have changed the way I see things: The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Heather Morris; The Girl with the Louding Voice, Abi Dare; The Midnight Librar y, Matt Haig.

Reading around subject matter and artists can really help develop the type of language you need to talk about your own work with. It's super important to read what other people are saying about artists to help form your own ideas - you may not think all work is any good but you need the language to able to understand why.

Reading transports us to another place and in terms of wellbeing it can certainly take us away from our immediate worries and anxieties. Characters in books often work through problems and negotiate challenging situations - we can so learn so much from them.

I love reading. I have always loved escaping into another world and even a beach read can spark ideas. I'm also really nosy and like to know what people are thinking!!! When I was a teenager I was obsessed with 'diary of a teenage crush' which would come out weekly in J17 magazine - I think I went to art school because of it - the 'crush' was inevitably a moody artsy photographer type!!!

I recently loved reading Educated by Tara Westover - it is such an inspiring story about how important education is in changing your life but also an insight into families who live outside of societal norms. Would really recommend! I also really love Murakami's Wind up Bird - a really bizarre story of a man who is having a midlife crisis and keeps finding himself inexplicably stuck at the bottom of a well. It's teaching me to be more quiet and still when I need to think things through rather than desperately scrambling for solutions!

I take great pleasure in escaping the every-day pressures and thoughts of normal life and leaping into another world. I'm a big fan of romance novels, as I'm a romantic at heart! No book beats Pride and Prejudice - Oh Mr Darcy!

If you study a language, you should be reading, and not just in the foreign language. Better skills in your native tongue help in your second language, although of course reading in a foreign language helps too. The first book I ever read in Chinese was Charlotte's Web, and I loved it! It was so satisfying to read a whole book in a different language.

Who isn't a big fan of reading?! I am a huge fan of real-life stories about people who have overcome adversity, or just biographies as no one's life is simple! I often read out snippets to my tutor group. One memorable one is from Becoming by Michelle Obama - 'in life, control what you can' has often been quoted to 13HC. I also loved The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (on the back of an assembly by Mrs Irwin about this book); being homeless, buying a tent off Ebay and walking away from everything with a terminal illness thrown in sound almost insurmountable challenges. And Ian Wright dedicated his autobiography to his primary school teacher because of the influence he has had on him.

I think the general benefits of reading (increased vocabulary, creativity, imagination, empathy etc) are well known. One of the perks, particularly for Classics and the issue to trying to keep hold of a thousand years' worth of history across two civilisations is that fact that the myths and the history keep getting reworked, so you end up reading the same story over and over in different ways. My GCSE Latin teacher told me that you need to read/do something 27 times before you know it (she may have said 23, but she only said it once, so I don't know for sure). I could read The Iliad 27 times, or I could read the versions by Homer, Pat Barker, Michael Hughes, Stephen Fry etc. Each one brings a different perspective (with the bonus of being similar to how Greek myths & oral tradition worked as well, similar but different each time) but repeats the same crux of the story.

I love that feeling when you notice your progress through a book, the adrenaline as you near the end, the sense of both accomplishment and loss when you reach the end (I have a preference towards series of books to lessen the 'loss', although it's massively magnified when you hit the last page of the whole series).

For me, reading is a double-edged sword where both edges are good for you. It scratches my itch for learning (new things, things I already know, doesn't really matter) and distracts me from the world around me at the same time. A good book can take you absolutely anywhere, any time.
Ms Wright (Learning Support)
I read The Salt Path by Raynor Winn which I thought was a lovely book. A couple who lose everything but find the natural world a healer for them. Lovely descriptive book of walking on South West Coast Path and shows how the fresh air and sea breezes help them come to terms with their lot.

Reading demonstrates how other people learn from their experiences whilst giving an insight and description of things you might not know about. It can be a humbling experience, particularly reading this book and makes you realise how fortunate you are. You can also learn how other people triumph from their bad luck.

Reading creates pictures in my mind. It's like a trip to a gallery or a holiday for my lockdown brain. I've recently re-read The Great Gatsby because it takes me to another era, but parallels the America of today.

The most adrenaline fuelled moment of the reading experience is the one when recognition streaks across the page and you find your innermost thoughts and feelings, whose outlines you only vaguely intuit, suddenly thrown into relief. Yet, what happens at that moment is not the exact replication of experience where writer and reader become indistinguishable, rather two consciousnesses come into contact across time and space to discover what is shared in the human condition. Reading therefore teaches us empathy, that most vital of sensibilities which enables us to understand others in their difference.

Reading takes me to other worlds, to understand a bigger picture, to understand other voices; it stretches the mind. I recommend A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, a doorstop of a book, but which it is impossible not to race through, because of the rich cast of characters. And secondly, Dorothy Kearns' Team of Rivals, a brilliant study of Abraham Lincoln.

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'Today a Reader, Tomorrow a Leader' - Why Reading Matters in 2021 - Notting Hill and Ealing High School

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By Miss Silvester, Head of English Margaret Fuller's statement about reading and leadership is one of optimism and pragmatism. An early feminist and one of the most prominent literary figures from the nineteenth century, Fuller hoped for a better and more enlightened world in the future, and had a firm belief that reading was central...

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Wichita, KS

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In the 11th century, a Japanese woman known as Murasaki Shikibu wrote "The Tale of Genji," a 54-chapter story of courtly seduction believed to be the world's first novel.

Nearly 2,000 years later, people the world over are still engrossed by novels - even in an era where stories appear on handheld screens and disappear 24 hours later.

What exactly do human beings get from reading books? Is it just a matter of pleasure, or are there benefits beyond enjoyment? The scientific answer is a resounding "yes."

Reading books benefits both your physical and mental health, and those benefits can last a lifetime. They begin in early childhood and continue through the senior years. Here's a brief explanation of how reading books can change your brain - and your body - for the better.

A growing body of research indicates that reading literally changes your mind.

Using MRI scans, researchers have that reading involves a complex network of circuits and signals in the brain. As your reading ability matures, those networks also get stronger and more sophisticated.

In one conducted in 2013, researchers used functional MRI scans to measure the effect of reading a novel on the brain. Study participants read the novel "Pompeii" over a period of 9 days. As tension built in the story, more and more areas of the brain lit up with activity.

Brain scans showed that throughout the reading period and for days afterward, brain connectivity increased, especially in the somatosensory cortex, the part of the brain that responds to physical sensations like movement and pain.

And speaking of sensing pain, has shown that people who read literary fiction - stories that explore the inner lives of characters - show a heightened ability to understand the feelings and beliefs of others.

Researchers call this ability the "theory of mind," a set of skills essential for building, navigating, and maintaining social relationships.

While a single session of reading literary fiction isn't likely to spark this feeling, shows that long-term fiction readers do tend to have a better-developed theory of mind.

Reading researchers as far back as the 1960s have discussed what's known as "the Matthew effect," a term that refers to biblical verse Matthew 13:12: "Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them."

The Matthew effect sums up the idea that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer - a concept that applies as much to vocabulary as it does to money.

Researchers have that students who read books regularly, beginning at a young age, gradually develop large vocabularies. And vocabulary size can influence many areas of your life, from scores on standardized tests to college admissions and job opportunities.

A 2019 poll conducted by Cengage showed that 69 percent of employers are looking to hire people with "soft" skills, like the ability to communicate effectively. Reading books is the best way to increase your exposure to new words, learned in context.

The National Institute on Aging recommends reading books and magazines as a way of keeping your mind engaged as you grow older.

Although research hasn't proven conclusively that reading books prevents diseases like Alzheimer's, show that seniors who read and solve math problems every day maintain and improve their cognitive functioning.

And the earlier you start, the better. A 2013 study conducted by Rush University Medical Center found that people who've engaged in mentally stimulating activities all their lives were less likely to develop the plaques, lesions, and tau-protein tangles found in the brains of people with dementia.

In 2009, a group of researchers measured the effects of yoga, humor, and reading on the stress levels of students in demanding health science programs in the United States.

The study found that 30 minutes of reading lowered blood pressure, heart rate, and feelings of psychological distress just as effectively as yoga and humor did.

The authors concluded, "Since time constraints are one of the most frequently cited reasons for high stress levels reported by health science students, 30 minutes of one of these techniques can be easily incorporated into their schedule without diverting a large amount of time from their studies."

Doctors at the Mayo Clinic suggest reading as part of a regular sleep routine.

For best results, you may want to choose a print book rather than reading on a screen, since the light emitted by your device could keep you awake and lead to other unwanted health outcomes.

Doctors also recommend that you read somewhere other than your bedroom if you have trouble falling asleep.

British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton once wrote, "Consolation from imaginary things is not an imaginary consolation." People with depression often feel isolated and estranged from everyone else. And that's a feeling books can sometimes lessen.

Reading fiction can allow you to temporarily escape your own world and become swept up in the imagined experiences of the characters. And nonfiction self-help books can teach you strategies that may help you manage symptoms.

That's why the United Kingdom's National Health Service has begun Reading Well, a Books on Prescription program, where medical experts prescribe self-help books curated by medical experts specifically for certain conditions.

A long-term health and retirement followed a cohort of 3,635 adult participants for a period of 12 years, finding that those who read books survived around 2 years longer than those who either didn't read or who read magazines and other forms of media.

The study also concluded that people who read more than 3 1/2 hours every week were 23 percent likely to live longer than those who didn't read at all.

So, what should you be reading? The short answer is: Whatever you can get your hands on.

There was a time when remote regions had to rely on librarians traversing the mountains with books stuffed in saddlebags. But that's hardly the case today. Just about everyone can access vast libraries contained in cellphones and tablets.

If you're pressed for time, devote a few minutes daily to a blog on a niche topic. If you're looking for an escape, fantasy or historical fiction can transport you out of your own surroundings and into another world altogether.

If you're on a career fast-track, read nonfiction advice offered by someone who's already arrived. Consider it a mentorship you can pick up and put down when it suits your schedule.

One thing to note: Don't read solely on a device. Flip through print books, too.

Studies have shown repeatedly that people who read print books score higher on comprehension tests and remember more of what they read than people who read the same material in a digital form.

That may be, in part, because people tend to read print more slowly than they read digital content.

There's nothing wrong with watching an entire television series, start to finish, in a single weekend - just as there's nothing wrong with eating a large, luscious dessert.

But binge-watching TV probably needs to be an occasional treat rather than your main source of intellectual stimulation. Research shows that prolonged TV viewing, especially for children, may change the brain in unhealthy ways.

Reading is very, very good for you. Research shows that regular reading:

improves brain connectivity

increases your vocabulary and comprehension

empowers you to empathize with other people

aids in sleep readiness

reduces stress

lowers blood pressure and heart rate

fights depression symptoms

prevents cognitive decline as you age

contributes to a longer life

It's especially important for children to read as much as possible because the effects of reading are cumulative. However, it's never too late to begin taking advantage of the many physical and psychological benefits waiting for you in the pages of a good book.

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Benefits of Reading Books: For Your Physical and Mental Health

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Reading books benefits both your physical and mental health, and those benefits can last a lifetime. They begin in early childhood and continue through the senior years. Learn how reading books can change your brain, your body, and your mental health for the better.

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Literacy Daily is a space to connect educators, students, and leaders with the latest news, ideas, tools, strategies, and research in literacy instruction.

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Books shelved as culturally-relevant: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea, The Day You Begin by Jacqueline ...

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Our searchable library of short texts offers a diverse mix of stories and perspectives. This multigenre, multimedia collection aligns with the Common Core's recommendations for text complexity and the Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards. Choose from informational and literary nonfiction texts, literature, photographs, political cartoons, interviews, infographics and more.

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12 Ways to Build Literacy in the Secondary Classroom: secondary teachers share ideas for literacy in high school!
I love books. Love, love reading. I collect books and decorate with books. Most ELA teachers adore the written word and share my love.

Actually, many of us became English teachers because we want to share our love of reading with students. Among lesson plans, meetings, modifications, and other parts of the job, showcasing literacy may have fallen. Teaching literacy in high school is important, though. How can we promote literacy in high school?

I reached out to eleven teacher bloggers with the simple question: How can we purposefully build literacy in the secondary classroom? What works for older students will not be what works for younger students. We secondary teachers need new approaches for promoting literacy in high school.

Below, you'll find honest and real ways to get older students reading, understanding the importance of literacy, and seeing the positive effects of knowledge. As we start school this year, implement a few of these practices to engage your older students with literacy.

Student-choice literature circles

One way that Christina, The Daring English Teacher, creates a literacy-rich classroom is by facilitating student-choice, high-interest literature circles. When teachers introduce students to high-interest novels, and when students have a choice in what they read, students gain an authentic love of reading.

Finally, to hold students accountable, my students use these Response to Literature Task Cards to discuss the events in the book. They also use various pages from this Sticky Note Literary Analysis resource to dive deeper into the novel and conduct high-level analysis conversations about the books. As a culminating activity, students work together to create a one-pager representing their books. For group one-pagers, she prefers to use a larger size paper. Secondary literacy can be easy to approach!

Student Conferences

Melissa, author of Reading and Writing Haven, shares that a key to creating an inspiring reading culture with older students is building relationships. A key way to build relationships through books (and one that is growing in the secondary education classroom) is through conferring. Books are windows into the world, and when we have meaningful conversations with students about characters, conflicts, themes, and connections, we can learn more about our tweens and teens. Teaching literacy in high school is often about relationships.

Conferencing with readers basically means that the teacher and student sit down one-on-one to have a meaningful conversation about the book a student is currently reading. At the beginning of the year, teachers sometimes focus on engagement questions (those that encourage students to open up about their prior reading experiences - even negative ones!) so that we can get a better picture of who they are as a reader.

Those conversations progress as the year continues, and, often, questions are tied to standards and reading strategies. For example, if you are using a whole-class text (let's say a short story, novel excerpt, or picture book) to model how conflict impacts the theme, give students a specific strategy to help them apply that same skill to their independent reading books. When conferring with them, ask students to talk about how they are seeing the conflict shape the theme specifically. Even if we haven't read the book, we can tell whether or not students can meet the standard. All we need is a snippet into their thinking, and then we can help to push them a little further along on the learning continuum by setting a goal for the next reading conference.

These free emoji reading response questions can be used as exit tickets and are helpful with determining whether students need a one-on-one conference for the standard-related question or whether the entire class needs a mini lesson. (It also makes for great literacy classroom displays!)

When teaching virtually, teachers can engage with students on tech platforms like Flipgrid, Padlet, and even journal prompts via Google Drive (albeit not at the same pace, but still worthwhile) to talk about reading.

If you'd like more details about how to make time for conferring with older students or how to choose reading goals and strategies for students to practice, you can read more about conferring with secondary readers on Melissa's blog, Reading and Writing Haven. As a literacy coach, she has tons of ideas for secondary literacy.

Graphic Novels

As teachers re-examine their classroom libraries to include multiple and diverse perspectives that provide windows and mirrors for students, let's chat about graphic novels. Staci from Donut Lovin' Teacher wants to remind us that graphic novels are just as powerful and valid as other types of text! In fact, they shouldn't just be part of our classroom libraries, they should also be part of the curriculum! (They are also beautiful, making graphic novels perfect literacy classroom displays!)

Teaching graphic novels entails learning how to read a graphic novel and can be used to help your students become better storytellers and writers that use descriptive details. Graphic novels can also be used to have students compare and contrast text types and it allows students to try out being graphic novelists themselves!

There are many familiar book titles that have become graphic novels such as The Giver, A Wrinkle in Time, Anne of Green Gables, and The Odyssey, to name a few. There are also so many newer titles such as The Unwanted: A Story of Syrian Refugees, They Called Us Enemy, and The Best We Could Do that can provide historical context and connections to current events and experiences. If you're looking for more titles, check out these graphic novels Staci thinks will make a great addition to an identity unit, or even just your classroom library! Teaching literacy in high school will take a variety of books.

Student work displays

communicate the purpose of work displays early in the year

ask students for permission to display work

don't display grades

when possible use typed work

highlight the skill(s) in the work

Hanging and spotlighting student work is a great and simple way to build community and showcase student authenticity. Tanesha loves using work displays to highlight the range of ideas and interpretations in writing. Regardless of the genre, Tanesha believes that the classroom belongs to the students and should celebrate strong work habits, unique ideas, and overall growth. To build literacy in the secondary classroom, display student work.

Project Lit

Staci Lamb from The Engaging Station creates a literacy-rich environment by building a classroom library that is inclusive and features a variety of lived experiences and perspectives with the help of the Project Lit Community.

In 2019, Staci and her friend, Anna (@klechuponagoodbook) started the Project Lit chapter at their school. They asked their friends, family, and colleagues for help in building their libraries through an Amazon wishlist. Not too long after, they had hundreds of books readily available for their book clubs. With help from others, they were soon teaching literacy in high school.

If you need a starting ground for adding books to your library, Project Lit (@projectlitcomm on Instagram) is a great place to start. You can also check our Staci's blog post featuring a variety of ways to build your classroom libraries on a budget.

Home Connections

Lauralee (you're on her blog!) cultivates relationships with parents so that students experience a uniform message: literacy is important. An important factor to build literacy in the secondary classroom is to share your literacy goals with the adults in students' lives. When she meets with parents for the first time, she explains her classroom's methods:

When you build relationships with the people at home, students hopefully learn that books belong everywhere. She's experienced fabulous support for independent reading and lit circles in her classroom because parents knew the research behind student choice. Furthermore, she's seen magical transformations like parents reading alongside their students. Reading can become an important part of students' lives when their parents understand what you're trying to accomplish.

A special note: She does not share these posters with students. Teaching literacy in high school requires a relationship with parents. She shows the statistics because as a parent, she wants to know them. However, she does not stress that data with students.

A Purposefully Designed Classroom Library

Using a 3-tier cart to display books

Moving extra books to a closet, but virtually cataloging them so students can see titles online

Using QR codes to YouTube videos of book recommendations and reviews

Literacy's Importance

One way to promote a love for reading in your classroom is to clearly communicate the importance of literacy. Abby from Write on with Miss G has found success by being transparent with her students about why we read. Regularly sharing the research-based benefits of reading literature can help students understand that reading is lifelong learning, exploration, fun, and self-improvement. Many students don't realize that reading improves empathy, life expectancy, intelligence, and more.

One way Abby loves to explicitly teach the benefits of reading is through "Why Read?" learning stations. Each learning station focuses on a specific reason for reading and pulls in informational text, multimedia, and studies to show students the advantages of reading.

Picture Books

Although they may seem too elementary for secondary ELA, picture books are one of the most unique and convenient ways to add diverse perspectives to secondary ELA classrooms.

Picture books make great thematic pairings, and students love the nostalgia of a picture book read aloud. Big kids like picture books too, and it's an academically supported strategy. Picture books are short, accessible, visually stimulating, and engaging, so they give you a great opportunity to introduce new perspectives. To learn more about how Jenna uses picture books to teach literary analysis, click here .

Reading Habits Inventory

Emily Aierstok, founder of Read it. Write it. Learn it., has been implementing independent reading and the reading workshop model in her 7th grade ELA classroom for almost 20 years. Several years ago, she decided to phase out reading logs and prize incentives based on research that showed logs and incentives are ineffective in motivating students to read.

Instead, Emily found that students needed to learn how to build a positive relationship with reading. Students who declared themselves as non-readers or as people who "hated" reading often didn't have the habits to support reading.

As a result, Emily created the Reading Habits Survey. Unlike a reading log, the Reading Habits Survey asks students to record their habits in order to set goals. Each week, students write down what they read, where they read, and how long they read. They also record the struggles they faced, or things that got in the way of reading.

Every Friday, students in Emily's classes review their Reading Habits, not for a grade, but for the purpose of setting meaningful goals. Students who are successful in accomplishing their goals share what helped them. Students who struggled share their struggles. Then, students set goals to work through those struggles and build on those triumphs.

The Reading Habits Survey not only helps students, but it also helps inform Emily's teaching. Emily is more aware of the WHY behind students' reading habits and can help students build a stronger relationship with reading.

Grab your free Reading Habits Survey here. You can read more about how Emily builds positive reading habits here.

Virtual Classroom Library

A virtual library is basically a collection of digital resources displayed on a particular platform, such as Google Sites or Google Slides. Digital libraries have been gaining in popularity due to the COVID-19 crisis, but many librarians have been touting their benefits for decades. For a little extra personalization, Shana suggests adding your own Bitmoji - click here to learn how to create a virtual Bitmoji scene in Google Slides.

Classroom Decor

Build literacy in the secondary classroom through intentional practices and relationships, through making a classroom library work for your community, through student choice, through picture books, and through collaborative practices.

This post contains various affiliate links. Please read my disclosures.

building relationships classroom community literacy

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12 Ways to Build Literacy in the Secondary Classroom | Language Arts Classroom

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12 Ways to Build Literacy in the Secondary Classroom: secondary teachers share ideas for literacy in high school! I love books. Love, love reading. I collect books and decorate with books. Most ELA teachers adore the written word and share my love.

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Embracing the Social Aspect of Independent Reading

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Many middle and high school students are interested in social media, and teachers can tap into that to promote enthusiasm for reading.

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Being able to read and write can be a superpower for anyone-so why not learn by reading about superheroes? Comic books can be used as a great tool for improving literacy skills, not just for children, but adults too.

At a 2016 Comic-Con in San Diego, California, a panel of education professionals shed some light on the superpowers that comics are filled with, both figuratively and literally. "Idioms, homonyms, homophones-you can see that clearly in the play between text and pictures," said Lalitha Nataraj, a panelist and librarian. "For that reason, comics are wonderful."

Another panelist uses Chris Claremont's X-Men comic book to explain one of the most significant roles comic books play in building literacy skills. "You have Colossus, and he's this big, giant metal guy. You get a really good sense of what the word colossus means and that's a good 10-cent word. Banshee's power is screaming. You have these characters that embody the vocabulary words that they are. That's something that's a fun way to learn new words, in addition to the contextual clues," said James Bucky Carter, author of Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels.

There are several ways that comic books can be used to educate learners of all ages.

Motivation
Adults who read at a low level or cannot read at all can be intimidated by books overflowing with text. Comic books deliver small amounts of text on each page that act as stepping stones to longer and more complex texts. With these small amounts of text, readers are exposed to a lot of details without having to decode more words then they can handle.

Reading Comprehension
The sequential artwork in comic books lays the foundation for building reading comprehension skills. You don't exactly get every detail of the story the way you do while reading a novel. Reading comic books requires a person to read between the lines, draw interpretations, and synthesize the information. By interacting with both the text and images, the reader can easily comprehend and visualize the story. The more they do this, the easier and quicker they can build their reading comprehension skills.

Dialogue
In comic books, readers are exposed to a great deal of dialogue. This especially is valuable for English language learners. Not only is the text short and simplified, but the images display various expressions during these dialogues. For someone who may not know English very well, it helps to read the text and see the expressions on the characters' faces to draw real meaning from the dialogue.

Writing
Comic books contain basic story elements such as setting, characters, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Each panel in a comic book equals one paragraph. Reading comic books can be a great exercise for adult learners. Not every panel will have text, but every panel will display a story element. With the setting, characters, etc. in place, learners can practice their writing skills by taking what they see and writing their own paragraphs.

Vocabulary
As mentioned above, comic books provide a baseline for learning vocabulary. Characters in comics are very unique, but are also built around various nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Readers can l earn new terms through word usage in addition to illustrative support.
Add Comic Books to the Literacy Agenda
Comic books can be the lone wolf in the world of adult literacy. Instructors' inventory of educational material may consist of online courses, printed workbooks, novels, etc., but not typically comic books. Let comic books join the pack and give them a try-you may be very surprised at how well they work as a building block for learners transitioning into more advanced reading and writing. Then learners can have their own superpowers!

Originally posted by Jennifer Vecchiarelli on Nov. 08, 2018 to proliteracy.org.

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5 Ways Comic Books Can Boost Literary Skills | Seeds of Literacy

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Being able to read and write can be a superpower for anyone-so why not learn by reading about superheroes? Comic books can be used as a great tool for improving literacy skills, not just for children, but adults too.

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teaching visual literacy: using comic books

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and more to develop comprehension and thinking skills

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teaching methods & materials - reading & phonics

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education / teaching methods & materials / reading & phonics

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teaching methods & materials - reading & phonics

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literacy skills; comprehension skills; alternative teaching methods; reading comprehension; motivation

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education / teaching methods & materials / reading & phonics

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Teaching Visual Literacy: Using Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Anime, Cartoons, and More to Develop Comprehension and Thinking Skills

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Amazon.com: Teaching Visual Literacy: Using Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Anime, Cartoons, and More to Develop Comprehension and Thinking Skills (9781412953122): Frey, Nancy, Fisher, Douglas: Books

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Mrs. Mason was "the perfect reading ambassador," said Sandra Martin-Chang, recalling an early reading role model, her high school English and drama teacher. "She encouraged me to read excellent books with great storylines. We read The Handmaid's Tale, and it was fabulous.... We'd envision it first and then think about how to enact it and bring it to life."

Now a professor of education at Concordia University, Martin-Chang studies how reading storybooks and novels influences cognitive development.

In a new study published in Reading and Writing, she and her colleagues found significant differences between students who read for pleasure outside of class-immersing themselves in fantasy novels or spy thrillers, for example-and those who primarily read books to satisfy school assignments. Not only was there a powerful link between reading for fun and stronger language skills, but students who disliked reading frequently attributed their negative outlook to experiences they had in classrooms. Too much emphasis on analyzing the compositional nuts and bolts of texts and reading merely to absorb information came at a psychological cost, the researchers found, as students disengaged from voluntary reading.

In the study, Martin-Chang and her colleagues surveyed 200 university undergraduates, asking them about their reading interests, how often they read for pleasure, what motivated them, and what experiences helped shape their attitudes toward reading. They were also asked to identify authors they had read in the past-a proxy for measuring how many books they had read. The young adults then took a series of tests to gauge their reading ability.

"We found that often children's experience in elementary school is far more positive, and then it drops in high school," said Martin-Chang. While children in kindergarten and early elementary school tend to read storybooks as they develop their reading skills-often sharing the experience with an adult-by high school, the nature of reading changes as students are expected to read a steady diet of more challenging, information-rich texts. Somewhere during that transition, a love of reading seems to fade.

In the study, 35 percent of students pinpointed a specific reason: They didn't enjoy reading because "being asked to analyze books in high school made it less pleasurable."

But analyzing the elements of good writing-how persuasion works, how figurative language can elevate texts-is essential to teaching kids the full range of their expressive potential, and Martin-Chang isn't suggesting that we read only for fun. "Competence is very, very important. We can't skip straight to books children love without teaching them how to do it right," she said. She likens reading to eating a well-balanced diet: "The people who say chocolate is good for you don't recommend eating it to the exclusion of all other things." Focusing primarily on analyzing texts and gathering information-a shift that tends to occur in middle and high school-can send the signal that reading is merely a utilitarian undertaking, robbing it of its powerful connection to human imagination, passion, and creativity, making it a lot less desirable.

We need to take reading for fun as seriously as we take academic reading, if we're going to sustain voluntary reading through middle school and high school, and into adulthood.

Expand Their Options

For Martin-Chang, reading for pleasure isn't a diversion from rigorous academics-it's a gratifying form of cognitive exercise, one that is both enjoyable and intellectually beneficial.

"We don't just want kids exercising in gym class, we want them to continue to exercise when they get home," said Martin-Chang. "So it's the same with reading. In school, we want to show them a range of things that hopefully they'll pick up, go home, and continue to do on their own time."

Even light reading provides a host of benefits, increasing verbal and creative skills, nourishing our capacity for empathy, and even reducing prejudice against stigmatized groups-all skills that are developed as readers become accustomed to inhabiting unfamiliar worlds, seeing things from new perspectives, and contemplating how a chain of events can lead to unforeseen outcomes.

Yet reading for fun-particularly the kinds of books that aren't part of classical literature or that don't carry literary prestige-is often considered less useful. "It's a false dichotomy," said Martin-Chang. "People feel like we either let the kids be creative, do what they want, and we give them choice, or we get serious about things and they excel and they're a good student. It's serious or it's fun. And that dichotomy is completely misguided."

That's why providing students with a rich and varied reading diet can make a difference. "Offer more choice," said Martin-Chang. Introduce students to Romeo and Juliet, but give them the option to read The Fault in Our Stars as well; let them read comic books and manga, sports writing and plays, sci-fi and horror novels. In other words, it seems clear that if we want students to build literacy skills, it's better for them to consume dozens of texts that they love, connect with, or feel inspired by, instead of grudgingly reading one because it's assigned.

While children's literacy skill development begins at home, teachers play a profoundly important part in encouraging students to love reading, a point that Martin-Chang makes clear when she's training preservice teachers.

"People will either talk about teachers that loved reading, encouraged them as readers and really lit a fire, or they'll talk about teachers who did the exact opposite," said Martin-Chang. "They'll talk about teachers that took something that was once pleasurable and diminished it, or they'll talk about teachers that didn't seem to like reading themselves, or made them feel like less of a reader."

In the study, Martin-Chang points to research on preservice teachers showing that "over half reported receiving little to no enjoyment from reading." The teachers often attributed their disinterest to experiences they had in school, a finding that Martin-Chang and her colleagues called "especially concerning," alluding to the cyclical nature of reading habits. "Teachers carry immense power in influencing students' attitudes toward reading," the researchers concluded.

So part of Martin-Chang's mission is to convince teachers-and everyone else-that there's tremendous value in giving students more choice in what they read, including books that may appear to be self-indulgent or have little intellectual merit.

In the classroom, said Martin-Chang, model a love of reading-go beyond grammar and meaning and inhabit the narrative worlds on the page. Emphasize choice, and give students opportunities to read and share during class time. Teachers have shared their own strategies to promote choice: Expand your classroom library beyond the traditional literary canon, and make sure it includes books that reflect students' backgrounds, cultures, experiences, and passions. Offer plenty of ungraded ways for them to think about their reading: To ensure that they do the reading without the pressure of grades, pair kids up as reading accountability partners; to enliven and dramatize books, let them act out scenes; to build a thriving community of readers, set up book clubs or book tastings. Avoid rote or mechanical exercises like reading logs, which can create the impression that reading is a chore to be completed and then quickly set aside.

"It's important to teach children how to read," said Martin-Chang. "And once we do that, we need to make it worthwhile. We've got to give them a reason. We've got to give them a view once they climb that mountain."

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Mrs. Mason was "the perfect reading ambassador," said Sandra Martin-Chang, recalling an early reading role model, her high school English and drama teacher. "She encouraged me to read excellent books with great storylines. We read The Handmaid's Tale, and it was fabulous....

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Introduction to Media Literacy: Crash Course Media Literacy #1

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Literacy Daily is a space to connect educators, students, and leaders with the latest news, ideas, tools, strategies, and research in literacy instruction.

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language arts & disciplines / library & information science / general

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library and information sciences / museology

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media literacy; information literacy; critical information literacy; critical thinking; media education; fake news; "post-truth"; international librarianship; digital literacy; digital citizenship; social justice

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language arts & disciplines / library & information science / general

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library and information sciences / museology

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Amazon.com: Teaching Media Literacy (9780838917213): De Abreu, Belinha S., Agosto Ph.D., Denise E., Ciulla Lipkin, Michelle: Books

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My 13-year-old recently approached me at bedtime, a worried look on his face. "Is there going to be a draft for World War III?" he asked sheepishly.

"Where did you get an idea like that?" I asked. I knew that kids were talking about the United States' recent conflict with Iran. But when he opened his phone to TikTok, the insanely popular used by millions of teenagers, I realized that I had no idea how much. He showed me thousands of videos kids had made. Most were meant to be satirical, I think, about being drafted. A quick search of the hashtag #WWIII showed that these videos had been viewed 1.2 billion times. That's I think he knew they weren't real, but the idea still seemed to make him anxious.

After reassuring him that there wasn't going to be a World War III or a draft for young men, I began to panic thinking about the of possibilities for young people who encounter wrong information on social media. After all, the average teen spends up to 9 hours a day online. And research has shown that simply repeating false information can make it seem more true. We need a better way. We need to teach media literacy.

Once bad information is out, it can't be contained.

Online disinformation is one of the biggest threats to our civic health, and in many ways, we underestimate its damage. Experts are already worried that disinformation could influence the 2020 election. The Russian disinformation machine that disrupted the 2016 election has gotten better at its job of creating chaos in the ensuing years.

The range of false information online is growing and proliferating, like that old movie The Blob. Fake text messages are going out all the time. For instance, there was one sent to young men, ordering them to register for the draft. There's also been a lot of false information about the Australia wildfires, so have jumped in to try and tamp it down by providing verifiable information.

Educators, like Brooklyn high school history teacher Amy Berman, say that the "misinformation machine" is a constant classroom battle. "We're constantly worried that students aren't savvy enough about the sources they're reading. Or they skip the source altogether," she said. "I know it's so pervasive. They see this stuff, and they're susceptible to believing it."

What do parents and teachers need to know about fake news, disinformation, and misinformation?

While conducting research for my book Building Better Citizens , I learned that young people are really bad at discerning what's true on the internet. A Stanford study of more than 3,000 middle schoolers showed that the majority had great difficulty discerning the difference between news articles and advertisements. They also believed a fake (or " ") video without stopping to identify its source.

So although this so-called "fake news" is certainly a problem, the actual threat is much bigger. It has to do with the structure of the internet itself. Misinformation , which is misleading due to error, or disinformation , which is misleading on purpose, are not only contained within "fake news" websites. This misinformation is everywhere-social media memes, viral conspiracy theories, and even arguments over what we used to think were undisputed scientific facts.

Researchers have a name for today's environment of increasing disagreement over facts: truth decay . Faced with an overload of information of questionable accuracy, citizens' trust is eroding, and soon they will begin to believe nothing is true.

This is already happening on college campuses, according to Mike Caulfield. He's a professor and director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University in Vancouver. "What we see happening is that students have low trust in everything. They don't know how to sort true from false in an effective and efficient way," Caulfield told me . "So their defense strategy is to more or less trust nothing."

Trusting nothing is not an option, warned Sam Wineburg. He's the executive director and founder of the Stanford History Education Group and leader of the Stanford Civic Online Reasoning study. What's at stake when young people are at risk of trusting no information?

"Liberal democracy," he said.

Can media literacy help?

Internet misinformation is a serious problem that threatens the health of our democracy. Experts agree that what students need most urgently is media literacy, a set of skills that help young people discern the accuracy of what they're looking at online. After the 2016 election, there was a mad rush to teach students media literacy. However, not all materials were quality or evidence based.

Now there are many organizations providing materials, tools, and guidance supported by reliable evidence. So you can ask your school about adopting an evidence-based media-literacy curriculum. In addition, here are a few more things parents and teachers can do:

Talk to kids about what they're looking at online.

Whether it's World War III memes or whatever the new trend is, one of the biggest safeguards that parents can put in place is to simply know what kids are seeing online and talk to them about it. (I consider myself pretty well educated about student media literacy, and even wrote a book about it, and I had the magnitude of memes my kids were looking at daily.) Ask kids where they think a photo or video came from. Who do they think made it? Also, remind them that just because a post went viral doesn't mean that it's real or true.

Help young people understand the difference between facts and opinions.

It's already difficult for young people to between news and opinion articles online. But because of the nature of social media, anyone can be an authority. Young people will see a celebrity or political figure tweet out a statement, and they assume it to be true. We need to teach them the difference between an impassioned personal opinion and news or scientific articles are supported by evidence. Encourage them to think, challenge, and tell the difference question the statistics they see online.

Talk about bias-in the news and on social media.

The Ad Fontes Media news bias chart places all the major news sites on a graph and slots their coverage into categories, like fact reporting, analysis, opinion, selective story, and propaganda, to help young people better understand what kind of information they're getting when they read an article. When friends and relatives share articles on social media, students (and grownups!) can consult the chart to better access the article's accuracy.

Provide media-literacy curriculum that's supported by evidence.

Stanford History Education Group has created a Civic Online Reasoning curriculum that includes free lessons and assessments for educators. One set of lessons, for example, teaches students lateral reading. This is a strategy for investigating the source itself. Is it credible? Many journalistic fact-checkers use lateral reading to identify and verify online information. In another lesson, "What's the Evidence?", students look at three arguments about Saturday school and practice evaluating evidence.

Teach young people about the role journalism plays in combatting "fake news."

Organizations like the News Literacy Project , founded by a veteran journalist, connect educators with resources on how journalism works and provide professional development on how to teach students about the news. Journalist Natalie Wexler that students take on the role of amateur journalist, rooting out corruption and holding power accountable within their own communities.

Stay informed about how misinformation is morphing on the internet.

One thing is clear: When it comes to the internet, the only constant is change. "Technology moves much faster than education," said Wineburg, and new ways of deceiving users may pop up faster than you think. To learn about what you can do to protect kids and students against misinformation, the RAND Corporation, authors of the Truth Decay study, have created an exhaustive resource list of tools for fighting online disinformation, from educational YouTube videos that teach how to identify false information online to apps and plug-ins that help verify news stories.

Whether it's bedtime questions about World War III or the latest meme, kids have questions about the information they're bombarded with each day. By teaching them media literacy, we equip them with the tools to find reliable answers.

About Holly Korbey

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In the Era of Fake News, Teaching Media Literacy is a Must

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My 13-year-old recently approached me at bedtime, a worried look on his face. "Is there going to be a draft for World War III?" he asked sheepishly. "Where did you get an idea like that?" I asked. I knew that kids were talking about the United States' recent conflict with Iran.

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Literacy Daily is a space to connect educators, students, and leaders with the latest news, ideas, tools, strategies, and research in literacy instruction.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Hello everyone!

You all know that I love talking reading workshop and Ron Clark Academy, and for this episode I got to do both!

Korey Collins is a certified reading specialist and reading teacher at the Ron Clark Academy, and he brings the inspiration and heat for our discussion today.

In this episode, we cover:

1. Korey's evolution as a teacher

2. How test prep is NOT backed by research

3. Why BASAL reading programs were never meant to be the core reading in classes

4. The power of graphic novels

...and MUCH MUCH MORE!
You do NOT want to miss this episode!
This episode is sponsored by Heinemann-the leading publisher of professional books and resources for educators-and their professional book, 180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents by Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle.

180 Days was inspired by a teacher's question: "How do you fit it all in?"

To answer that question, Kelly and Penny spent an entire school year planning, teaching, and reflecting together.

Through their collaboration, they identified the most essential everyday practices for helping middle and high school students become more engaged readers and writers.

180 Days maps out a year of the most powerful, engaging literacy practices.

It provides insights about time management, teaching strategies, and how to effectively use both whole class and independent work.

You'll also find a library of accompanying videos that support each chapter.

So, if you want to make every moment matter in your classroom, and empower your students to live more literate lives, visit Heinemann.com to download a sample from 180 Days or order your copy.

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#145 Reading Workshop, Ron Clark Academy Style, with Korey Collins (pt.1)

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Hello everyone! You all know that I love talking reading workshop and Ron Clark Academy, and for this episode I got to do both! Korey Collins is a certified reading specialist and reading teacher at the Ron Clark Academy, and he brings the inspiration and heat for our discussion today.

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Why we should all be reading aloud to our kids

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Why we should all be reading aloud to our kids

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Why we all need to start reading aloud to our kids | Keisha Siriboe | TEDxWanChai

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"storytime village" "read aloud" storybooks "books for parents" "early reading" "read out loud" "read along" storytelling "first time readers"

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We know you love stories and we love them too. We are a husband and wife team who take some of the most entertaining stories out there and bring them to life with wonderful storytelling, music and sound effects. Anyone can follow along and learn how to read while enjoying entertaining stories that captivate you.