When I was growing up, I went to a school which had a book room. For this reason, and perhaps others, we studied the diabolically mind-numbing The Old Man and the Sea; a book about wharfies (not sure if the teacher thought it would be relevant to us working-class inner Newcastle kids); and Away, a play that references Bex, Australia’s own ‘mother’s little helper,’ more times than a teenager can meaningfully absorb. You see, we simply studied whatever was “in the book room,” with 25 or so copies intact. These are the three texts I remember, and not because of their quality or appeal.
In many schools, not much has changed. Public schools in some cases take up to $1m a year in voluntary contributions, expect students to BYOD, but will not ask parents to pay for a $20 novel. In some secondary schools, teachers all study different texts with their classes, unable to cobble together a grade’s worth of class sets. Even at HSC level! The mind boggles when the question of parity in marking is raised. I was recently involved in drafting a reading spine for Ochre Education, and their survey results made similar findings — except for a few favourites, there were not many strong trends in text-selection, even in primary schools.
So, what is a reading spine? Jasmyn Hall from Ochre composed this little gem, drawn from Reading Reconsidered, which deserves to be reproduced here:
What students read is one of the most important considerations a
school can address. Our Reading Spine is carefully constructed in
a way that may reflect the lived realities of students, recognising,
representing and widening their understanding of diverse cultures
and their knowledge of the world beyond their lived experiences.
Therefore, text selection requires intentional, careful management
and thought at a school level. A shared, whole-school decision
making approach, with careful analysis and selection of high quality
texts, provides coordination across the school, teacher development
opportunities, shared workloads and ultimately, supports wider
reading opportunities and better reading outcomes for adults.
A reading spine is carefully curated (in this case by me for 7-10, Emina McLean for F-6, and with Caroline Reed, CEO of Ochre popping in some choice inclusions), and presents a selection of vetted texts at each grade level. We’ve done a lot of the hard work so that time-pressed educators — and even teachers who are teaching out of subject area — don’t have to. It includes the texts that have been selected as part of Ochre’s curriculum resources. The list has been critiqued by subject matter experts and a national panel of literacy experts from all over the country. I think it’s pretty good!
The process was enriching, rewarding and enlightening. It’s not often that I get asked to pick my Fantasy Premier League of books for young people. But I had to step outside my own tastes and really consider the breadth of school, teacher and student experiences that this spine had to cater to. It’s not as easy as it sounds. The National Curriculum has all sorts of requirements, from environmental sustainability to diversity. And that’s aside from the fact that these books might be the only ambitious texts that students come into contact with over their school life.
I think the knowledge that helped me most was Lemov, Driggs and Woolway’s Plagues from Reading Reconsidered. The idea is that with plenty of teacher support and active, guided comprehension, students can access more difficult texts that we realise. The Plagues are the stumbling blocks to comprehension, like complex stories and narrators, resistant texts and archaic language. They’re not to be avoided — in fact, students need exposure to, and support in understanding, these features. If we pitch texts at the independent reading level, then students leave our classes each day knowing about as much as when they walked in!
I know there’s an appetite in primary schools to secure the best book for the job. I hope that in secondary, we consider banishing the book room, where novels go to die. That’s not to say the classics are out — there are plenty of classics in the Ochre spine. As an adult, I love smelly books with other people’s names crossed out on the endpapers. But wouldn’t it be nice for teenagers to be able to crack that spine for the first time on their own copy? How do we shift the expectation to BYON(novel), as well as BYOD?
The Reading Spine can be found here. You can sign up and access it for free. If you have strong opinions about the selection, Ochre would love to hear them.