Rigorous Reading by Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher

 One of my Popsugar categories this year was to read a book with career advice. While I know that some people probably struggled to find a book they wanted to read for this one, I had no problem at all. I have a huge plastic bin full of teacher books that I haven't gotten a chance to read yet stored neatly in my closet. This is a category of books that I tend to compulsively buy from. I'm always looking for ways to improve my classroom, and education catalogues get put in my school mailbox all the time. I end up buying way more teacher books than I have time to read, so it was no trouble to pull one of those out. In thinking about what I want to improve on in my classroom next year, I went with Rigorous Reading by Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher. Strap in, because it's about to get very teacher-y in here.

Rigorous Reading was written to help teachers engage their students in complex text. The book is organized around five access points for teachers. Each point promises to help teachers build student comprehension of difficult reading passages. The access points discussed are:

1. Purpose and Modeling
2. Close and Scaffolded Reading Instruction
3. Collaborative Conversations
4. An Independent Reading Staircase
5. Demonstrating Understanding and Assessing Performance

Each access point has its own chapter, in which the authors define the concept, go into detail about its connection to reading comprehension, give strategies for its implementation in the classroom, and provide examples of how other teachers utilize the concepts with their own students. Included alongside the written information are example handouts and videos of teachers modeling different practices in their classrooms, accessible through QR codes printed right near the relevant sections of text. About half of the total length in the book is devoted to a professional development guide for teachers who plan to train school staff on the Rigorous Reading access points.

I had mixed feelings about this book. On the positive side, I did enjoy the information about collaborative structures and how to assess student performance. I know that one of my weak spots as a teacher is trying to do too much and control everything in the classroom. I want to provide more collaborative activities for my students and keep a closer eye on their individual progress and there was some solid information on how to structure this type of work in the text. I also enjoyed the videos. It was really easy to scan the QR codes with my phone and instantly watch an example of what the text was talking about.

What I didn't enjoy as much was the lack of depth in each chapter. Each section was pretty short, and only skimmed the surface of the concepts it was presenting. Most of the information was so generic that I doubt I'm going to remember a lot of it once some time has passed. Instead of devoting the entire second half of the book to instructions for professional development activities, I with that Frey and Fisher could have included some sample lessons or more explicit instructions for developing the processes they outline in the first half. The information they present is correct and the access points make sense, but I don't think there were enough specifics included to make this a resource I will return to while I'm lesson planning.

This is not necessarily a book I would recommend to other teachers looking to improve their professional practice, with one exception. Teachers who are new to the craft will find the ideas that fill the pages of Rigorous Reading useful. However, if you are a seasoned teacher, then you probably already know most of the points that Frey and Fisher explain, and would do better to look in other resources for a more thorough look at how to teach rigorous texts to students.

Challenge Tally
Popsugar Challenge: (a book with career advice) 31/40
TBR Challenge: (previously owned) 28/60

Total Books Read in 2017: 36