Make Them Listen 2: Length

What to do when your learners don't last much beyond Chapter 1

When helping educators attract their learners’ engagement in a story or class book, there are typically three main reasons why learners aren’t interested:

• content

• length

• language

In this three-part series, we’ll explore how to overcome each of these challenges. This time, we’re looking at…

Length

“Can anyone suggest any books that will get my whole class hooked to the very end? I’ve already tried a lot of the recommendations here, and usually they are good for the first chapter or two. But then many of the boys get bored and act up.”

This 👆 will likely be a very familiar story to many educators. I guess as much because I see words to this effect in virtually every educators’ forum I’m part of online. They’re complaining that, on the rare occasions their children get engaged by Chapter 1 of a class text, the boys (and it’s almost always “the boys”) lose interest before the halfway mark.

Me, I’m sure it isn’t just “the boys” who struggle with reading stamina. The wonderful Rebecca Simpson-Hargreaves of the Manchester Institute of Education recently facilitated one of the most vibrant and insightful workshops at the UKLA/NEU Primary Literacy Conference, in which she explored how children often play up to expectations. In this case, we expect boys to be boisterous when bored – so that’s how they show it. Maybe the girls are bored too, but they’re much more polite about it.

(There’ll be a series on the insights I gathered from the Primary Literacy Conference soon, by the way – stay tuned! If you missed it, though, you can already read/hear something of my experience from this week’s Pepys Show.)

Any which way, though, the question remains: How can we keep learners enthralled all the way through a multi-chapter novel, which is expected to last them an entire term?

Most educators expect it’s to do with the book – and in part, they’re probably right. Some books are exceptional at capturing and holding the interest of the wide spectrum of learners you have in your class. But what might seem like a magic bullet with one class might be a rotten tomato with others.

But here’s the analogy Rebekah Owen and I used in our book, All the Better to Read You With: Stories & Lessons to Inspire Reading for Pleasure: when a child is taught to walk, they don’t cross the room a few times, then get taken straight out for a walk to the park. They get put in a pram, taken to the park, and then released to run around it – usually several times a month, and for several months before we expect them to walk the journey themselves.

The joy of the park is of course a metaphor for the joy of a story. However, it’s important to note this: the joy of a story is really only truly known after it’s finished.

It’s the ending of the story that brings the satisfaction of knowing Ah, this is where it was all headed… This is the reward I get for investing my time in going on this journey.

An oft-quoted phrase is, “The journey is more important than the destination.” Anyone walking down the aisle for their wedding, rushing to A&E, or desperate for the loo will likely disagree. Joking aside, the journey is important, sure – but only in the context of the destination.

What does this mean in relation to enthralling learners with reading? Well, once we’re sure our learners can cope with an early phonics reader (walking through the room), we typically give them three or four story-based picture books (walks in the park) – but then we move as swiftly as possible onto chapter books (walking to the park).

But having just three, four, even six short stories across a year is barely enough for a learner to understand the joy of hearing a story in its entirety. To truly build that reading stamina, they need to experience how a wide variety of beginnings relate to their associated endings, so they can get more adept at identifying the clues dropped by writers in the early stages of a story.

Those are the clues that writers drop to earn the reader’s investment in the story – investment that we yearn to have rewarded. Book-wise, that manifests as motivation to reach the end.

So there it is: If your learners are struggling with reading stamina, then choose short stories as your class read. You’ll be moving onto novels in no time.

Those of you working with learners under the age of 7? Remember: the three–six picture books you cover across a year are nowhere near enough. Why not try the Little Miss and Mr Men series? Or Spot the Dog? It will be easy to segue from books such as these into slightly longer stories, such as those by Beatrix Potter or the entire Winnie and Wilbur collection.

For those needing inspiration for ages 7+, follow this link for a fantastic list by the BookTrust. Most of the books in this list will also be suitable for older learners, though follow the “S” hyperlink at the top of the page to find a list of short stories more specifically curated for teens.

Since Winnie and Wilbur was mentioned, I think it’s only fair to mention that Winnie’s illustrator Korky Paul works with me to produce the Fables & Fairy Tales series, which puts two engaging short stories into the world every month. The books are written using the Bigging It Up principle I talk about here, making them accessible and appealing to the widest range of readers aged 7+ (and often listeners aged 4+).

There is even a Fables & Fairy Tales Club, which sends its members each new book as soon as they’re released, along with bonus goodies. The Epic Educator Club goes yet another step further, containing plans for using the stories to teach knowledge-rich lessons in a wide array of subjects – and always English, Maths, and Science.

If you’ve read this far, I think you deserve a discount code to get 25% off one of those Epic Educator Club memberships – so follow this link to sign up and use MAKELISTEN2 at checkout.

(Psst – you can also use that code to get 25% off a copy of All the Better to Read You With from the publisher’s website. After all, that’s another collection of short stories with accompanying lessons…)

Please let me know how increasing the use of short stories with your learners impacts their reading stamina – I’d love to hear your stories!

Next up: blasting through language barriers – what to do when your learners are put off by the writer’s chosen vocab…