4/2/2017 Educational Leadership:Common Core: Now What?

:Nonction Reading Promotes Student Success

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December 2012/January 2013 | Volume 70 | Number 4

Common Core: Now What? Pages 80-82

Research Says / Non ction Reading Promotes

Student Success
Bryan Goodwin and Kirsten Miller

The average child in the United States spends roughly 4 hours and 29 minutes a day
watching TV, 2 hours and 31 minutes listening to music, and 1 hour and 13 minutes
playing video games. And how much of their leisure time to do they spend reading BUY THIS ISSUE
non ction?

Less than 4 minutes a day.

That's the nding from a national study sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts,
2010). Sure, children are reading outside schoolabout 25 minutes a day, according to the study. But most of
that reading appears to be ction. Another study found that juvenile ction outsells non ction by more than 4
to 1 (Milliot, 2012).

Even in classrooms, non ction appears to be in short supply. Duke (2000) conducted a study of 20 1st grade
classrooms and found that informational texts constituted, on average, just 9.8 percent of texts in classroom
libraries. The mean number of informational books per child was just 1.2 in low-income districts and a still
relatively paltry 3.3 in high-income districts. On average, students spent just 3.6 minutes with informational
text each day. Lower-income students fared worse, logging just 1.9 minutes of exposure to informational text
(for example, during student reading, teacher read-alouds, or writing activities) during an average school day.

A New Emphasis on Non ction

The new Common Core language arts and literacy standards attempt to correct this imbalance by placing more
emphasis on reading non ctionstarting with an equal emphasis on literature and informational text in
elementary school (Coleman & Pimental, 2012). At nearly all grade levels, students are expected to develop
research skills across content areas with a strong focus on non ction, including literary non ction; essays;
biographies and autobiographies; journals and technical manuals; and charts, graphs, and maps (Gewertz,
2012).

For many schools and districts, the Common Core standards' greater emphasis on text complexity, reading
comprehension, and non ction likely represents a sea change. Porter, McMaken, Hwang, and Yang (2011)
found low to moderate alignmenta range of 10 to 48 percent overlapbetween states' existing language
arts standards and the Common Core standards, with an average alignment of only 30 percent.

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4/2/2017 Educational Leadership:Common Core: Now What?:Nonction Reading Promotes Student Success

In light of this new emphasis, we should ask what the research says about the bene ts of reading non ction. Is
it really worth tearing kids away from The Hunger Games , the Harry Potter books, or Diary of a Wimpy Kid ? After
all, with multimedia consuming so much of students' time, shouldn't we be happy they're reading at all?

What Students Read Matters

For years, we've known that the amount of independent reading students do contributes to their reading skills.
Students who read more tend to learn more vocabulary, become more pro cient readers, nd reading more
enjoyable, and thus continue to read more and become ever better readers (Stanovich, 1986). Poor readers, on
the other hand, tend to read less and lose ground. Over time, these di erences create a widening gulf in
learning. Students at the 90th percentile of reading volume (reading 21.1 minutes a day) encounter 1.8 million
words a year, while students in the 10th percentile (reading less than one minute per day) read only 8,000
words a year (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2001).

Only in the past decade, however, have researchers begun to uncover that it's not just how much students read
that matters, but also what they read. In particular, students need to read and comprehend informational texts
as oftenand as uentlyas they do narrative texts.

Traditional basal textswhich consist of largely narrative contenthave come under increasing scrutiny. A
comparison of an enrichment reading program and basal reading programs (Reis, Eckert, McCoach, Jacobs, &
Coyne, 2008) found that the enrichment reading group scored signi cantly higher in oral reading uency than
did the basal reading group. Students in the enrichment reading group received instruction on thinking skills
during teacher read-alouds; independently read self-selected books; participated in individualized reading
conferences; and engaged in a variety of enrichment activities of their choice, including book discussion
groups, creative writing, and other interest-based projects. The researchers concluded that providing
"structured silent reading of self-selected challenging books, accompanied by supported, individualized
reading instruction may be a promising way to increase reading uency" (p. 312).

In the Common Core State Standards, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the
Council of Chief State School O cers (2010) cite a compelling research base supporting the shift to more
complex, non ction texts. They note, for example, that students who are able to answer questions related to
complex text have a high probability of earning a C or better in an introductory-level college course in U.S.
history or psychology.

One reason reading non ction may be so important is that it helps students develop their background
knowledge, which itself accounts for as much as 33 percent of the variance in student achievement (Marzano,
2000). Background knowledge becomes more crucial in the later elementary grades, as students begin to read
more content-speci c textbooks (Young, Moss, & Cornwell, 2007) that often include headings, graphs, charts,
and other text elements not often found in the narrative ction they encountered in the lower grades
(Sanacore & Palumbo, 2009).

How Teaching Needs to Change

In response to the new standards, many teachers may need to shift how they approach both reading and
writing. For example,

Book reports will ask students to analyze, not summarize. Presentations will be graded partly on how
persuasively students express their ideas. History papers will require reading from multiple sources; the
goal is to get students to see how beliefs and biases can in uence the way di erent people describe the
same events. (Santos, 2011)
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4/2/2017 Educational Leadership:Common Core: Now What?:Nonction Reading Promotes Student Success

One English teacher who taught a unit on the in uence of media on teenagers said that she had previously had
her students cite just one source for their papers; this year, she had them read multiple sources, including
surveys, newspaper columns, and a 4,200-word magazine article by Nicholas Carr titled "Is Google Making Us
Stupid?" (Santos, 2011).

Teachers may nd that this shift pays o in terms of student enthusiasm. Researchers have noted one other
bene t of non ction reading: the potential to motivate young children to read by tapping into their interests
(Caswell & Duke, 1998). This may, in fact, be the most important insight to be gleaned from research. Although
students may continue to nd ction appealing, non ction doesn't have to be boring. On the contrary, allowing
students to explore and pursue their interests within a broad array of informational texts can help them to see
that the real world can often be just as surprising and intriguing as make-believe.

References

Caswell, L. J., & Duke, N. K. (1998). Non-narrative as a catalyst for literacy development. Language Arts, 75 ,
108117.

Coleman, D., & Pimental, S. (2012). Revised publishers' criteria for the Common Core State Standards in
English language arts and literacy, grades 312 . Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School O cers.
Retrieved from http://groups.ascd.org/resource/documents/122463-
PublishersCriteriaforLiteracyforGrades3-12.pdf

Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (2001). What reading does for the mind. Journal of Direct Instruction,
1(2), 137149.

Duke, N. K. (2000). 3.6 minutes per day: The scarcity of informational texts in rst grade. Reading Research
Quarterly, 35 (2), 202224.

Gewertz, C. (2012). Districts gird for added use of non ction. Education Week, 31 (12), pp. 1, 14.

Marzano, R. J. (2000). A new era of school reform: Going where the research takes us . Aurora, CO: McREL.

Milliot, J. (2012, July 20). Industry sales pegged at $27.2 billion. Publishers Weekly . Retrieved from
www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/ nancial-reporting/article/53112-industry-sales-
pegged-at-27-2-billion.html

National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School O cers. (2010).
Common Core State Standards for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and
technical subjects, appendix A . Washington, DC: Authors. Retrieved from
www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_A.pdf

Porter, A., McMaken, J., Hwang, J., & Yang, R. (2011). Common Core standards: The new U.S. intended
curriculum. Educational Researcher, 40 , 103116.

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4/2/2017 Educational Leadership:Common Core: Now What?:Nonction Reading Promotes Student Success

Reis, S. M., Eckert, R. D., McCoach, D. B., Jacobs, J. K., & Coyne, M. (2008). Using enrichment reading
practices to increase reading, uency, comprehension, and attitudes. Journal of Educational Research, 101 ,
299315.

Rideout, V. J., Foehr, U. G., & Roberts, D. F. (2010). Generation M2: Media in the lives of 8- to 18-year-olds .
Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation. Retrieved from www.k .org/entmedia/mh012010pkg.cfm

Sanacore, J., & Palumbo, A. (2009). Understanding the fourth-grade slump: Our point of view. The
Educational Forum, 73 , 6774.

Santos, F. (2011, April 24). A trial run for school standards that encourages deeper thought. New York
Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/nyregion/100-new-york-schools-try-common-core-
approach.html

Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew e ects in reading: Some consequences of individual di erences in the
acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21 (4), 360406.

Young, T. A., Moss, B., & Cornwell, L. (2007). The classroom library: A place for non ction, non ction in its
place. Reading Horizons, 48 (1), 118.

Bryan Goodwin is chief operating o cer at McREL, Denver, Colorado. He is the author of Simply Better: Doing
What Matters Most to Change the Odds for Student Success (ASCD, 2011). Kirsten Miller is a lead consultant at
McREL.

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