It has been said that every teacher is a reading teacher. While most educators may agree with this in theory, others are in the trenches putting these words into practice. PW spoke with three educators who are committed to integrating reading across the curriculum to elevate literacy and readers in their classrooms and libraries.
Destiny Love Lawyer teaches sixth grade ELA and social studies with a few seventh and eighth grade elective classes mixed in at Windsor School in Windsor, Vt. She says that reading is at the heart of all she does. “For me, reading across the curriculum is combining different subject areas instead of teaching through the lens of just reading,” Lawyer said. “I teach reading through content areas such as social studies or science.”
While the instructional focus of her social studies classes is on ancient civilizations, her methods are using a variety of texts—fiction, nonfiction, and primary resources—to teach and engage her middle school students. As they wrapped up their recent exploration of ancient Egypt, her students each read and researched specific topics, and created ancient Egyptian artifacts along with informational posters. They soon will be presenting their artifacts and posters to different grade level classrooms, and their parents, too.
To help guide her students, Lawyer taught mini writing lessons and used mentor texts like Dan Gutman’s historical fiction title, The (Mostly) True Story of Cleopatra’s Needle, about how Cleopatra’s obelisk traveled from Africa and ended up in New York City. “It is written as journal entries with fictionalized accounts of five kids through different phases of ancient Egyptian history,” she said. “I had my students read both fiction and nonfiction to help them create their own content for their posters.”
Lawyer also like to piggyback off what her students are learning in science to meet their ELA standards and to enrich their learning. Their next unit of study will be on environmental activism and will include book clubs on a wide array of timely topics.
“As I do with every book club, I will ‘book talk’ a ton of titles. I do this because some students will prefer to read by themselves, and others will want or need to do it as a club for support to make the text more accessible,” Lawyer said. Next, she will follow up the talk with a mini-lesson on something regarding their reading or writing. “Then, the groups will take turns either reading aloud or silently, and discuss their texts. I let the kids decide.”
Upon finishing a set number of pages, Lawyer often has related tasks for her students to complete. For this particular study, the assignments will include discussing and/or writing about the issues presented in their books, the negative impacts of them, and the living organisms being affected, in addition to preparing slide presentations.
Lawyer believes that tying in reading across subjects and giving her kids a choice in books helps to expand learning. She attributes it to what she describes as the jigsaw learning strategy. “There isn’t enough time in the day or year to teach all the things they want to learn,” Lawyer said, “but if you can break it down in pieces, they can learn lots of things from each other.” She said this equates to greater connections, different perspectives, more questions, and empowered learners. “They learn and then they have a choice—and a voice.”
Pia Ledina, a media specialist at Western Middle School in Greenwich, Conn., loves to hear her students in her library and the school’s hallways talking about books they’re reading. Ledina believes this literacy chatter does not happen by accident. To help facilitate it, she has opened up her calendar and created a dedicated website where teachers and readers can book time with her to find books to teach or read across subject areas, respectively. “One of my teachers comes in every month,” Ledina said. “We talk about a whole pile of titles across different genres for her students to choose from with greater purpose for independent book selection—rather than just wandering around the library.”
But Ledina does not believe that all who wander are truly lost; they just might need a little guidance. So, along with her meet-and-read website, she is planning a drop-in book club with her teachers, in which they will read together some of the latest picture books, middle grade titles, and professional development books, too.
“We’ll read kids’ materials to become familiar with more of the popular titles, and professional books so teachers can become more comfortable in areas outside of ELA, and talk about books, the value of independent reading, and how vital reading is to children’s overall education.”
Ledina also extends reading outside the walls of the library with in-class collaborations. “Recently, I assisted our consumer science teacher and students with research reports to make sure they had the support and materials that they needed.”
Beside these efforts, she is also passionate about helping teachers model their own reading lives and habits. A few ways she will do this include having teachers post lists of the titles they are reading by their classroom doors, and encouraging their participation in World Read Aloud Day, among other ideas.
Her ultimate goal—as well as that of her school—is to continue building a culture of reading where kids reach for a book, instead of their Chromebooks, when they have completed assignments. Ledina is keenly aware of the library time her students lost during Covid, and the research that says students’ reading for pleasure decreases when required reading for class work increases.
“We’ve made a concentrated effort at our middle school to help kids identify areas of interest that they might like to read about,” Ledina said. “If kids never learn to love reading, it’s never going to be important to them—and they’ll never appreciate how it can, and will, take them everywhere.”
Julie Stivers is currently the high school librarian at the Carolina Friends School, a Quaker school in Durham, N.C., and before that was the middle grade librarian at Mount Vernon Middle School in Raleigh, N.C. Whether she’s working in a high school or middle school, she’s always had a hands-on approach to teaching reading across subjects.
After her N.C. district purchased a curriculum with novels already embedded, and she could no longer advise her ELA teachers on book choices for their novel studies or offer ways to help meet their curricular standards, Stivers embraced the chance to assist teachers in other curricular areas.
“I think the best way to do this is not just to share a title, but to share my expertise,” Stivers said. “For example, in a seventh-grade science class I taught Cells at Work by Akane Shimizu, a Japanese manga series [from Kodansha Comics] that anthropomorphizes white and red blood cells in the body, along with viruses, bacteria, etc.”
Working alongside the science teacher, Stivers did the literacy instruction from discussing the story’s plot to character development, while her colleague taught the science content, concepts, and vocabulary. When Stivers helped teach a unit on WWI with the social studies teacher, she used Nathan Hale’s graphic novel Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood, A World War I Tale (Abrams).
“It’s a tricky topic to teach middle schoolers,” Stivers said, “so we decided to do a readers’ theater with each country as an animal, and had the kids make a bookmark organizer to better understand and remember what they had learned.”
Stivers also learned the value of the rich reading partnerships that she now fosters with her high school teachers and students. In addition to finding titles with ASL characters for her school’s ASL classes, and human anatomy books and horror stories for anatomy students, she is teaching a Reclaiming Reading class (she got the title and idea from fellow librarian Angie Manfredi). In this class, Stivers’s students can focus on reading books of their choosing without papers or tests. The only expectation is to find joy in reading again.
“High school students have so many pulls on their time, including more rigorous coursework and jobs; and the fact that this class gives them the time and space during the school day to read is really beautiful for their hearts and mental health,” Stivers said.
She will also be reading a list of titles (including Galaxy by Jadzia Axelrod, Victor LaValle’s Destroyer, and The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui) with students in her upcoming Comic Lit class. “I chose graphic novels in particular, because they are literature, and there are students who engage more fully with graphic formats than text-only formats.”
Stivers believes that this must be a consideration when teaching and/or choosing any literature for kids. “This honors these students, and the format being a part of the curriculum offers multiple literacies. They are decoding more than just the text, but the graphics, too.”
She feels fortunate to have the opportunity to teach these classes and the freedom to choose diverse books in different subject areas. “This way, I’m showing that reading is not only centered in ELA class, but it’s across all curricula. I see my role as doing just that.”
She realizes that many teachers and librarians don’t have the same opportunities. “I’m speaking from a white cisgender privilege,” Stivers said. “So, we have to use our privilege to protect those who don’t have it and double down on getting inclusive books into all libraries and classrooms. These books are roadmaps to what is possible.”
