High Attention Reading: Preparing Students for Independent Reading of Informational Text

High Attention Reading offers a new way to get students of all reading levels to independently read informational texts with more effort, attention, and stamina. It provides a format called HART (High Attention Reading through Talking) that uses purposeful, intermittent student talk to heighten engagement and accountability during independent reading. The book includes easy-to-implement lessons to get started with HART, as well as discussions about the relationships among motivation, engagement, and content area reading. It also provides practical information for how to impact a difficult to reach aspect of reading, strategies for building students' critical thinking through discussion and writing, guidance for how to increase student ownership of attending to background knowledge and content vocabulary, and a framework that can be used by reading and content teachers in both elementary and middle school.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 144 pages
Publication date: 28 October 2022
Publisher: Teachers' College Press

High Attention Reading (HART) is a novel approach to fostering independent reading among students of diverse reading levels, emphasizing effort, attention, and stamina. Author Hale contends that while increasing the number of informational texts children read is crucial, it is not sufficient to achieve this objective. To prepare students for the reading demands of high school, it is essential to provide strategic scaffolding for the habits of mind required to read this genre at a high level and the motivation to do so. The book introduces elementary and middle school teachers to a format called HART (High Attention Reading through Talking), which utilizes purposeful, intermittent student talk to enhance engagement and accountability during independent reading. The book includes easy-to-implement lessons to get started with HART, as well as discussions about the relationships among motivation, engagement, and content area reading. Chapters describe how HART scaffolds and supports student ownership of background knowledge, content vocabulary, and critical thinking about texts. Teachers will learn how to create conditions that foster motivation and engagement with informational text, while also creating authentic accountability to help students read to their potential.
High Attention Reading (HART) is a groundbreaking approach to independent reading that can be seamlessly integrated into any reading curriculum, from reading workshops to more structured comprehensive programs. It offers practical insights into how to impact a challenging aspect of reading: the internal effort students make while reading complex text independently. HART provides strategies for building students' critical thinking skills through discussion and writing, as well as guidance on how to increase student ownership of attending to background knowledge and content vocabulary.
A. High Attention Reading (HART) is a novel approach to fostering independent reading among students of diverse reading levels, emphasizing effort, attention, and stamina. Author Hale contends that while increasing the number of informational texts children read is crucial, it is not sufficient to achieve this objective. To prepare students for the reading demands of high school, it is essential to provide strategic scaffolding for the habits of mind required to read this genre at a high level and the motivation to do so. The book introduces elementary and middle school teachers to a format called HART (High Attention Reading through Talking), which utilizes purposeful, intermittent student talk to enhance engagement and accountability during independent reading. The book includes easy-to-implement lessons to get started with HART, as well as discussions about the relationships among motivation, engagement, and content area reading. Chapters describe how HART scaffolds and supports student ownership of background knowledge, content vocabulary, and critical thinking about texts. Teachers will learn how to create conditions that foster motivation and engagement with informational text, while also creating authentic accountability to help students read to their potential.

Weight: 363g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780807767283