subject: Reading Opportunities: What And How Much Do The Teachers Ask Their Students To Read? [print this page] Before analyzing the strategy use of the teachers, I analyzed the opportunities for reading in each course. Using lesson plans, student notebooks, handouts and worksheets, and PowerPoint and overhead materials, I determined an average number of pages of required in- and out-of-class reading per week. It is important to note here that I acknowledge that with regard to print and text, we are in a sea of change. We are moving from the "dominance of the medium of the book to the dominance of the medium of the screen" (Kress, 2003, p. 1). The screenwhether computer, television, or videois providing many new modes for subject matter to be represented, including still images and moving images (Bezemer & Kress, 2008). The concept of "literacy" is in flux. In addition, many believe that the use of a single print text is insufficient for meaning making and engaging adolescents in content area MBT Shoes classrooms (Walker & Bean, 2005). To their credit, the study participants used a variety of modes to represent content area knowledge, including print in textbooks, trade books, and handouts as well as images and text on PowerPoint and the Internet.
To quantify and make sense of the reading required of students, I used "pages of text required" as the medium of comparison. Text pages included both in- and out-of-class reading assignments in textbooks or other trade books. Handouts included articles from the Internet or expository text from other reference materials. Each overhead or PowerPoint slide counted as one page. Worksheets had to have a minimum of 50 words to be counted as a page. In cases where worksheets had fewer than 50 words, they were combined to count as one worksheet. Table 1 shows the average number of pages of weekly required reading in the four participants' classrooms.
The biology classes were very similar in the number of pages of required reading for text and handouts. While the average number of pages in the third category is substantially higher for Jackie's class, most of the difference occurred as a result of Jackie's use of PowerPoint slides, which were rich in visuals that both supported students' meaning making as well as motivated them. For example, she included a picture of a woodpecker to demonstrate "directional selection" and embedded cartoons connected to the content to capture the students' attention. In Ed's case, the district expects all teachers to follow a pacing guide based on the textbook. Given that most biology textbooks are a minimum of 400 pages and students were asked to read approximately 3 pages per week, it is likely that Ed's students only read approximately 20 to 25 percent of the textbook over the course of the year.
The two English classes were also similar in the reading opportunities afforded students. While there are "certain commonalities in their use of academic language," Shanahan and Shanahan (2008) stated that disciplines are unique "in how they create, disseminate, and evaluate knowledge, and these differences are instantiated in their use of language" (p. 48). These differences may account for the fact that reading opportunities of text or trade materials were four to five times greater in the English than the biology classes, whereas biology students were more likely to read Cheap MBT Shoes text from handouts than students in English classes were. It should be mentioned that both English teachers taught a unit of writing during the weeks of collected lesson plans. As such, it is possible that over the course of the year, students may average more pages per week when writing is not a focus. It is interesting to note that even with the different contexts (e.g., suburban and rural), the reading opportunities are very similar across all four cases.
