“No adult reader picks up a book expecting to write an answer to someone else’s questions every time they’ve read fifteen to thirty pages. Yet with good intentions, we use this approach in the classroom to encourage students to be metacognitive about how they read and to think more deeply about what they read. While many of us like to write about our reading, that habit is self-directed: we choose when to pause; we choose what to write. When teachers enforce an arbitrary stopping point for response and limiting what that response can be, not their own natural ebb of attention and personal interest, makes students less likely to pick up a book. We communicate that reading is an act of compliance instead of communicating that reading is an act of personal liberation. Yet liberation is our goal.

How can we expand upon students’ identities and skills as readers while honoring their existing identities and the self-directed path of strong independent readers?” Crystal Belle