So I Guess you can judge a book by its Cover

            I was always told that you can’t judge a book by its cover…but as it turns out you judge every book by its cover, or at least that’s what the READ teacher is telling the grade 9 students at Aden Bowen.

            The READ teacher’s job is to help students improve their reading abilities. She has a her own classes where she works with students who need extra help learning to read, as well as doing workshops in different ELA classrooms to help students become masters at reading. She was doing a workshop in two of the English classes I was observing and when she was explaining the lesson plan to me, I mentioned that I was reading a textbook about reading strategies that had several similar teaching methods. As it turns out, this is because the book she used to develop her strategies is Gallagher’s Deeper Readings (Yes, I realize how lucky I am).

            To introduce the new novel study The Body of Christopher Creed, the students looked at three different print covers and were asked what stood out in each, and what the covers hinted at. Students looked at the covers and identified shapes, colors, font type and the overall picture. With each point the students made they had to write down a question and a prediction about what the message cover was trying to tell them. 

            The READ teacher followed Gallagher’s idea that students need context before they start reading to become engaged in the book and fully understand it. By focusing the students on theorizing what the covers could possibly mean, the students began to form a basic idea of what the book was about before they’d even held the book in their hands. By the time the students had been given the book, they were already interested in what was going to happen.

            I think this is a very good strategy for students to learn, because if students are able to look at a book and make a solid prediction to what the book is about, when they go to choose books on their own they are more likely to be able to pick books they enjoy. The students were very interested in being involved in this activity. Students were keen to give their predictions because they could guess anything and they weren’t wrong.

            Once they were given the novel, the students were instructed to follow along while the teacher read the novel out loud and that they would again be filling in a predictions and questions chart. The READ teacher explained that the author has dropped hints throughout the first chapter to catch the reader and that they are to look for those and write them down when they come across something that strikes them as odd. She started the students off by pointing out the odd comments for the first few pages before they had to find them on their own. By helping the students out for the first few pages, she was modeling reading behavior for the students and showing them how to question the text.

            The following day the students posted their questions and predictions on a bulletin board and will be revisiting them closer to the end to see if they were right. Now when reading the novel, the students will be looking for clues to their questions and to see which of their predictions were right. 

            By having the students invested in the different possible outcomes, the students are now asking several questions about what is going to happen. Students want to know if they were right about the book cover, who the characters are and what is going on in their lives. After having watched their class and listened to the first chapter, I too want to know what happened to Christopher Creed.