Berit Gordon - No More Fake Reading: Merging the Classics with Independent Reading to Create Joyful, Lifelong Readers

Gordon knows all the excuses students give about why they dont read. With a finger on the pulse of teen lives, she has developed a coherent plan for reintroducing them to the joy of reading. Using the techniques outlined in this book, students cant help but become engaged, especially as they discover contemporary issues in time-honored classics. The most important message in the book? When students are secure in the company of a caring and accomplished teacher, great things happen.

Nancy Frey
Author of Visible Learning for Literacy
San Diego State University, San Diego, California

There is so much to love about this book! Grounded in the authority of classroom practice, it makes independent reading work in new ways by actively teaching and sharing how to read, and by leveraging the social power and pleasure of reading. The approach is based on an elegant principle of cognitive apprenticeship: meet students at their current state of being with their current interests and use this as the platform to help them outgrow themselves. The approach allows for authentic and democratic differentiationthrough various materials, levels of support, groupingswhile all students are working in complementary ways on a common project. This approach mirrors what expert adult readers do: they put texts into conversation with each other to make global meanings.

Jeffrey D. Wilhelm
Professor of English Education, Boise State University
Boise, Idaho

After attending an eye-opening workshop with Berit Gordon, I followed her lead and tried something new with my freshman college prep students. Id been teaching Great Expectations to this age group for years, and it was always a challenge for them and for me. The assigned nightly reading went unread, and if the students did read, they did not understand it. Every day felt exhausting as I would reteach the previous nights assignment. This year, using Gordons ideas as a guide, I opted to use the novel as an in-class text, analyzing passages to teach close reading skills while the students chose books to read on their own. Students delved into these high-interest contemporary books and made consistent meaningful connections between Great Expectations and their independent novels. They wrote literary essays about their choice books and took a test on Great Expectations, for which they received extremely high marks, demonstrating their mastery of a sophisticatedand previously dreaded!text. The experiment was a huge success! Working through a complex text together with focused instruction enabled students to engage with a difficult book, and appreciate it in a way they never had before. Interestingly, they enjoyed Dickens so much that I taught more of the book than I had originally planned!

Ellin Glassband
High School Teacher, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South
Princeton Junction, New Jersey

While I had spent over twenty years implementing book clubs and independent reading in my language arts classroom, I had never quite approached it in the same way Berit Gordon outlines in No More Fake Reading. Now, my students are reading at least double the previously required amount, and they are thrilled with the large amount of choice. I found it effortless to create a curriculum where I match in-class texts with independent reading. The students find the more challenging texts enjoyable when sampling them rather than haranguing through the truly difficult ones or just reading SparkNotes!

Rose Leonard
English Teacher, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South
Princeton Junction, New Jersey

How can we inspire reading and critical thinking in a time of widespread student distraction and disengagement? Berit Gordon helps bridge the gap between theory and action with classroom-friendly strategies that work. Test them out, and like me, you may find your students begging for more time to read.

Jessica Miller
English Teacher and Literacy Coach, Keenan High School
Columbia, South Carolina

Berit Gordon is the best word whisperer, lighting a love for words in even the most reluctant of readers and writers. Her techniques create an atmosphere of electricity in a classroom that has lost its spark for communication. Many books that Ive read only speak to the strategy and provide anchor charts. Gordon goes further and explains the what, why, how, and when of the strategy in use. This is key. Gordon is key. For many of us, we know what we want our students to do. We just need a little direction to get there. Gordon provides the map, serves as GPS, and leads us to a place where our classrooms are now abuzz with engaged readers and inspired writers.

Wendy Platt
Eau Claire High School
Columbia, South Carolina

Bob Daemmrich / PhotoEdit

To the official and unofficial teachers in my family, which is all of you.

No More Fake Reading

Merging the Classics With Independent Reading to Create Joyful, Lifelong Readers

resources.corwin.com/nofakereading

• Berit Gordon

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Copyright 2018 by Berit Gordon

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Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-5063-6551-0

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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