Reading Ladders

 Using reading ladders to help our students grow as readers was not a strategy that I was familiar with before reading Lesesne’s chapters this week, but it very much appeals to me as a teacher. I am very familiar with the tendency of some students to limit themselves to a very bland and safe reading diet, and am eager to help them develop a more varied and sophisticated palate. Creating a series of books that are connected in theme and gradually increasing in complexity takes the process of helping students find books similar to ones that they have read and liked one step further by intentionally and gradually leading them out of their comfort zone. It’s really a brilliant concept! I totally agree with Lesesne that we ask students to “take great leaps” (p. 49) in their reading, and that we would better serve our students by guiding them more carefully into more complex and difficult texts. 

I love Lesesne’s recommendation to use short surveys in the form of checklists to get to know students’ reading preferences. This is something that is accessible for language learners, and would be an authentic way for them to use the academic language of language arts class to discuss their favorite genres and formats. I think that this is something I would have them include in their classroom journals so they could revisit and reflect on their growth and progress throughout the year. 

I appreciated the author’s use of an example that included an ESL class creating a reading ladder together. This would be such a powerful activity to do with my students, building the skills for the students to do their own reading ladders in groups. There are such creative ways to incorporate all sorts of texts into reading ladders. The more I read chapter six, the more my wheels were turning. Although I haven’t created reading ladders in my classroom, I have used picture books to introduce complex topics, supplemented texts we are reading in class with podcasts, video clips, songs, and poems. Now that I think about it, I have been scaffolding my students’ reading with a rich variety of texts, but have not taken the final step of incorporating reading ladders. By implementing reading ladders in my classroom, I will intentionally and thoughtfully push my students to broaden and stretch their reading capabilities. 

Since the classes I teach are support classes, I have wide latitude to structure them as I see fit. I see reading ladders as clarifying my teaching, rather than complicating it. I am only limited by my knowledge of texts that I can use with my students, and as Lesesne points out, “How can I not find time to read?” (p. 83). It is something that I sometimes view as a guilty pleasure, but I should really place more value on the reading that I do and its power to affect my students’ learning. 

Reference

Lesesne, T. S. (2010). Reading ladders: Leading students from where they are to where we’d like them to be. Heinemann.