novels vs. basal readers By Carolyn

One thing that you can tell your district is that reading textbook publishers only place excerpts of novels in them. When you read a novel, you get the entire book! Why read a part of a story when you can read the entire thing! I started out reading "Sign of the Beaver" to my students from the reading textbook and I thought it was ridiculous. The action picks up somewhere in the story and gives little background as to where they were before the story picks up. I put the textbook aside and went to our bookstore and checked out the book instead. We read the entire book.

Children also do not appear to be as interested in the textbook stories, because they don't get to "know" their characters as much. My kids get so wrapped up in a novel and the characters by the time we really get into the book. They talk about them as if they are real people. You just don't get that when you read from the reading textbook. The continuity is not there.

You can still teach skills when you teach from novels. For what it's worth, the students I taught last year were taught mostly from the reading textbook in fourth grade. I taught them only from the novels. Their state test scores were higher at the end of fifth grade when I was finished teaching them. That might have happened anyway, but there may actually be some research out there that points to higher achievement levels for children who have been instructed from novels.

Typically, I focus upon one or two reading skills for the week. I can get some worksheets and activities from novel units which are commercially prepared, or I can make up my own. We make up cartoons about the chapter after we have finished reading it to show story plot. We make up skits. We do read alouds. All of the same stuff you can do with the textbook.

I would be interested in knowing if anyone out there can recommend a good reading textbook. Ours isn't too bad, but there must be some out there which integrate vocabulary, comprehension, and other skillbuilding activities while remaining interesting.