Will Slow and Steady Win the Race?

Are you a speed reader? Do you rush through books and articles? Do you pride yourself on how many pages you can read in an hour, or how many books you can read in a month?

You are not alone! As I read Thomas Newkirk's most recent book, The Art of Slow Reading, it became clear to me that we are doing a disservice both to ourselves and our students with our relentless drive to improve the quantity...and not the quality of reading. In an earlier post, I praised the benefits of close reading, but Newkirk takes this idea a giant step forward with his advocacy of slow reading.

In Chapter 1, Newkirk proudly confesses that he is a slow reader. He defines slow reading as: the relationship we have with what we read, with the quality of attention that we bring to our reading, and with the investment we are willing to make. It is based on the belief that good writing is never consumed (page 2). 

Newkirk recommends that we adopt these Six Time-Honored Practices for Engagement. They are:

1.  Performing: Attending to the texts as dramatic.
2.  Memorizing: Learning "by heart."
3.  Centering: Assigning significance to a part of a text.
4.  Problem finding: Interrupting the flow of reading to note a problem or confusion, and adopting strategies to deal with the problem.
5.  Reading like a writer: Attending to the decisions a writer makes.
6.  Elaborating: Developing the capacity to comment and expand upon texts.

These practices are not new...are they? Do you remember memorizing poems and passages from great literary works, and then performing them in front of your junior high class? I certainly do. At the time, we may have dreaded those moments, yet I bet we remember those words and the meaning of those words much more than what we read silently. If you pick up Newkirk's book, I promise you that you will be intrigued with his critique of the rise of silent reading in Chapter 3.

So, even if the Race to the Top motivates us to improve our instructional practices, let's not forget to ask ourselves this question: Can fluency and literacy be a race? Newkirk gently reminds us that "fluency can never be a race. Faster is not always better" (page 18).

I, too, have a confession. I bought this book last Saturday and actually thought that I would fly through it over the weekend and would be ready to write a blog post about it on Monday. Well, I'm only up to page 68...and guess what? I am savoring every minute of it!