Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters

by G. Kylene Beers

Skills are important. But if we aren’t reading and writing so that we can grow, so that we can discover, so that we can change—change our thinking, change ourselves, perhaps help change the world—then those skills will be for naught.

Book. Head. Heart. Three words. Use them as a frame for talking. A frame for writing. A frame for your own planning. But mostly use them as a way of reminding yourself and your students that we read to do more than learn from the text; we read to do more than enjoy the text. We read to learn more about ourselves. We read to become more than we knew we wanted to be.