More to Know: Pleasure Is Essential Jeff Wilhelm and Michael Smith (2013) investigated the pleasure that avid adolescent readers take from their out-of-school reading in their book, Reading Unbound: Why Kids Need to Read What They Want—and Why We Should Let Them . They demonstrate that pleasure is not incidental to reading—it’s essential. They found that the young people with whom they worked spoke of their reading pleasure with remarkable sophistication—and their pleasure supported the intense and high-level engagement with texts that schools seek to foster. The authors write: In our study of the out-of-school reading lives of 14 eighth-graders who were avid readers of texts often marginalized in schools (romances, vampire stories, horror stories, dystopian novels, and fantasy), we strove to understand the nature and variety of reading pleasure. We found that our participants were remarkably articulate about why they read what they read. Our data also convinced us of the importance of choice. Students should have regular opportunities to behave the way adult readers do and choose their own reading. They know the kinds of texts from which they will take pleasure. At the same time, teachers should expand the possibility of pleasure by introducing students to new books they might not select on their own. If we want students to embrace reading now and always, then we need to keep at the forefront of our attention the rich, complex, and profound pleasures of reading. Wilhelm and Smith also found that the reading pleasure their students experienced was multi-faceted and led them to read for a number of reasons—at times, for sheer fun and enjoyment, but also for the profound intellectual, social-emotional, and psychological benefits they received from reading. For this reason, Wilhelm and Smith maintain that students must be free to choose at least some of their own reading in school. Report from a Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) Program Jeff McQuillan (2001) reports similar breakthroughs with pleasure reading in SSR (silent sustained reading) at a diverse high school in Anaheim, CA. Most of the students were Latino, and many came from economically deprived homes with limited access to books in their homes or communities: Fundamental to any SSR program is, of course, a set amount of time each day for students to read to themselves. Pilgreen and Gribbons (1998) point out that successful SSR programs must be carried out on a regular and frequent basis and not as an occasional activity or tacked on as “filler” on Friday. The teachers started off slowly, allotting 10 minutes a day during the first few weeks of the semester. Most students weren’t accustomed to having time for pleasure reading in class, and some needed to work into the habit gradually. No other reading materials (e.g.,
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THE POWER OF READING CHOICE, TIME, AND PLEASURE
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