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Running head: READING ENGAGEMENT ACTIVITIES FOR BRS

Reading Engagement Promotion for Beijing Royal School

Weiyan Xia

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Abstract
Reading English literature has been a big issue for Chinese teachers and students. Teachers
feel frustrated to push or even force students to read; students feel stressful and even desperate to
finish what they are required to finish and just give up. With the emerging of digital devices,
online tools and technologies, we are in a new phase of teaching literature reading, and there are
so many things that we can do to promote the reading engagement. This article designs some
reading activities for Beijing Royal School students to help with their literature reading.

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Reading Engagement Promotion for Beijing Royal School
--Reading Activity Design
Introduction
As educators, we strongly hope that literature teaching in middle school and high school can develop the
love of reading and to cultivate lifelong readers. However, as a teacher, it is painful to see students
frowning, bored, distracted or even giving up when they are required to read English literature. Reading is
not only a part of the school curriculum, or an assignment to finish and turn in, also a very significant
section in students learning process. There are some positive outcomes of engaged reading that affect
students academically and socially. Engaged reading starts from motivation, goes to engagement and
achievements, and ends with higher motivation. Motivation, engagement and achievement form a circle
with engagement as the most critical chain (Irvin, Meltzer, & Dukes, 2007).
Why is Reading Engagement so Important?
To discuss about reading engagement, we should start from this question, why do some students choose
to read when others do not?
Most of the teachers must have noticed that a lot of students are reluctant literature readers. Among them,
many students are even turning into nonreaders (Turner, 1992), no matter what levels their reading
abilities are. Many studies and researches have been conducted to explore the reasons behind this. People
found out that students choose not to read literature or regard reading literature as just an assignment that
needs to be done mainly because of the following:

They cannot find the relevancy between the literature and their life experience. Most of

the students are assigned to read some classic books, which either were written by someone living
decades or even centuries ago, or are about events or things that happened decades or even
centuries ago. Students dont feel or see that these books or stories have anything to do with their
life in the current world.
Students dont sense any challenge in their literature reading. This kind of literature
reading is too plain for them to get interested and engaged. Challenge brings pressure, also

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impetus if the challenge is on a proper level. When there is challenge in literature reading,
students will feel urged to read, to understand and to discuss about it, which leads to engagement.
But when there is challenge, teachers should make sure that there will be appropriate support and
assistance available for students.
Typically, teachers are teaching or assigning students literature reading by grade levels,
not based on students individual reading levels, but there are a large proportion of students
whose reading levels dont match with their grade levels. Unmatched reading level and grade
level lead to uninterested or reluctant reading.
To be successful in reading, engagement is the key, and it also affects the consequential learning, and
leads to sustained spontaneous interaction and practice. Reading engagement is the best predictor of
measures of reading achievement, reading comprehension, vocabulary and reading speed, including gains
in reading comprehension (Anderson, Fielding, & Wilson, 1988, p. 285). Reading engagement connects
motivation and achievement, its a merger of motivation and thoughtfulness (Guthrie, 2001), and leads
to sustained active and independent reading. An engaged reader understands a text not only because she
can do it, but because she is motivated to it (Guthrie, 2001). When students are engaged in reading, they
immerse in the context of the text; their mood fluctuate with the characters; they feel themselves as a part
of the story. They are in a state of total absorption or flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991).
Engaged readers attain comprehension, enjoy learning through reading, and gain confidence about their
reading ability. Reading has the power not only for learning and achievement, also for gaining and
improving social skills, student agency and strong communities, which are not measurable by exams or
able to be put into a curriculum, but critical for successful and psychologically healthy human beings
(Rutherford & Worthy, 2013). A research report (Rutherford and Worthy, 2013) mentioned some positive
outcomes of engaged reading reported by middle school students. Through engaged reading, students
got:
Expanded book knowledge and world knowledge,
More spontaneous communication with their classmates, friends, and families outside of
school;

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Make new friends, deepen existing friendships, and grow stronger and more complex
relationship with teachers and parents;
New identified selves from a new angle
A shift from a fixed performance mindset to a dynamic view of learning
The sense that they have the power to change their social relationships, academic and
personal lives positively.
Pedagogy for Reading Engagement
Based on the factors that affect reading engagement, there are some pedagogy that can be applied to
revamp literature reading instruction.

Piaget and Schema

In Piagets cognitive development theory, he believed that young adult, who are in the concrete
operational period and the formal operational period, need to make new information connected with their
prior experience to build schema to acquire new knowledge. For young adult, when reading literature,
they need to have this kind of connection between the literature and their life to meet their physical,
academic and social needs.

Reader-response

Reader-response theory (by Rosenblatt, 1991) is the theoretical base for students to interact with the
reading material personally. This theory view the literature more as means than a subject. The relationship
between the reader and the text as the dynamic interaction between the work of art and the personality of
the reader (Rosenblatt, p.273). Through responding to the reading material, students can achieve a full,
sound reading of the text, broadened personal context of emotions and ideas into which this response
will be incorporated, enlarged understanding of human beings, increased esthetic sensitivity and
more fruitful human insights from literature (Rosenblatt, p. 273). By providing personal reactions to the
text, students will be able to compare and contrast the similar circumstances in the text and in their
personal life experiences, which can make students feel relevant with what they are reading. Relevancy
can lead to engagement.

Writing-reading connection

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Writing and reading used to be taught as two separated and different disciplines, but lately, the synthesis
of writing and reading is much more accepted. Any teachers of composition or of literature over the past
decade recognize that we have experienced a radical shift in our approaches to both subjects (Burkland
& Peterson, 1986, p. 190). When students are working on writing as an isolated assignment, they usually
feel short of personal involvement. By integrating writing with reading, students can learn how to express
their idea effectively, and students can write more productively with the context provided by the reading.
The achievement they make on writing will motivate and urge them to read more effectively.
Technology Matters!
Our students are born in a world of digital technology and internet. They have access to various digital
devices and technologies; they get information about the external world instantly; they communicate with
the outer world more virtually. They are living in a different way from when we were at their age; they
view and treat the world in a different way from that we used when we were at their age. Digital
technology and internet is a large part of their life. We can also find that they are mainly using technology
and internet for social, entertain or video games, seldom for academic purpose. And teachers most of the
time are used to teach in the traditional way with traditional materials. Whats more, teachers are so
concerned that internet and other digital devices and technologies distracts students from their learning.
According to a research conducted by PEW Research Center in 2012, 64% of the teachers surveyed agree
or strongly agree that todays technologies do more to distract students from school work than to help
them academically. But, whats more important is that we must be aware of the positive impact from the
technologies. With so many technologies keep emerging, the nature of literacy in the present society is
changing accordingly, which can be used as a helpful construct in teaching students. We acknowledge that
technology gadgets play an important role in motivation. In a study about e-readers (Miranda, Johnson &
Rossi-Williams, 2012), we can see that e-readers make books always available (Miranda, Johnson &
Rossi-Williams, 2012) for students, who dont have to worry about someone else reading it or taking it
out of the classroom; e-readers also reduce the carrying load for students because they can read what they
wanted without carrying around a lot of books(Miranda, Johnson & Rossi-Williams, 2012). They are

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also some features that students reported helpful and practical for their literature reading, e.g., responseto-text feature allows them typing and save personal notes and response; dictionary feature offer help
about vocabulary to English language learners. Besides these, e-readers allow teachers to provide reading
materials privately which for lower reading level students, helps to avoid being embarrassed if someone
found that they were reading low-level texts.
Except for these benefits, PEW Research Center also found that digital technologies help students in
many other ways. 96% of teachers surveyed agree that todays technologies allow students to share their
work with a wider and more varied audience; 90% agree that internet encourage learning by connecting
students to resources about topics they are interested in; 78% agree that todays digital technologies
encourage students creativity and personal expression; 76% agree that the multimedia content available
online immerses students more fully in topics they study; 72% agree that the availability of digital content
has broaden students worldviews and perspectives; 79% agree that todays digital technologies encourage
greater collaboration among students (Purcell, Rainie, Heaps, Buchanan, Friedrich, Jacklin, Chen, &
Zickuhr, 2012)
Students now are so used to stick with their digital devices and internet. For young adult, if we want
them to change or modify, guiding is more effective than blocking. Therefore, we do not try to remove
technology from their life. Instead, we use technology with them.
Reading Activity Design for BRS
I.

BRS Students Analysis

Beijing Royal School is a private school, from kindergarten to grade 12. Students of Beijing Royal
School have the following features.
1.

They are mostly from wealthy families, whose parents either own their own business or

are high level employees, managers or administrators in a corporation. These students are in a
family with busy and have-very-little-time-to-stay-with-kids parents or extremely busy fathers
and housewife mothers. From Sunday evening till Friday afternoon, they learn and live on

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campus. Their parents pay for their tuitions, and then leave everything related to study to
teachers.
2.

The most majority of the students are guaranteed with a future pretty good job. They

dont need to worry that much about job interview or whether they will survive by themselves
like students from other families with ordinary income. Without the pressure from the future, they
are lack of the motivation to strive for a better future which leads to unengaged learning, which
gives students a lot of spare time to play around and become troublemakers.
3.

Furthermore, in the life of BRS students, they have access to various modern, fancy and

newly emerging digital devices and technologies. They spend most of their after class time on
their smart phones, online social apps, and online video games. Teachers and school
administrators and even their parents would have no problem considering them as the net
Generation or computer kids-- a cohort of children, teenagers, and young adults who have
been immersed in digital technology and the digital way of thinking since their conception
(Garfinkel, S. 2012 Technology Review)
4.

BRS students are English language learners. With Chinese as their native language,

English should be considered as their foreign language rather than second language because the
English level of BRS students is so much lower than that of their Chinese. This is a very big
reason that makes them reluctant readers since they are facing not only comprehension problem
also language concerns when they are reading English literature. Because of their lower language
level, their reading levels dont match with their grade levels. As adolescents, middle school
students and high school students need to have choices, autonomy, purpose, competence,
encouragement, and acceptance, and they will try very hard to avoid any possibility to get
embarrassed in front of their peers to save their face. They need to have chance to choose
something at a proper level to read with sufficient support and assistance, but not revealed to
public.

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5.

Even though BRS students have problem with English, they will still need to prepare

to be enrolled by American colleges after 3 years of high school, which makes reading even more
crucial for their preparation.
II.

Digital in BRS

BRS is running on the frontier of Chinese education with technology using. In 2012, BRS built a satellite
station and a satellite classroom. With them, BRS can connect with any schools with these facilities and
devices and communicate with them. BRS students can be taught be a teacher from the US, and BRS
teachers can teach students in a public school of Jinggangshan (which was sponsored by BRS). Since
spring 2013, BRS launched the program of mobile teaching and learning. Part of the teachers and students
are doing the pilot teaching with iPad right now, and it will be used soon by all the teachers and students.
III.

Approaches used in BRS previously

Before the mobile teaching and learning program launched, BRS teachers were using traditional teaching
method for reading. Students were assigned to read a book (usually some classic books) in a period of
time, and then wrote a book report or book review based on what they read. Some teachers would require
students to do some in-class discussion to test whether they were reading. Some teachers would create
some comprehension quizzes for students to answer. There would also be some creative teachers that
would create some projects based on what they were reading, for example, role-play, poster making, etc.
IV.

Reading Activity Design

Reading Club

This Club is an after-class student organization. In this club, students will have the autonomy to
choose the books they would like to read, and organize the activities. An instructor (one or more
teachers) will be part of the organization, but not the dominant one, just for supporting and
assistance. Some activity suggestions are:
1. Chronological Theme Reading
This activity is designed to help students gain the sense of history and be aware of things
happened in the world they are living in. Students will read paired texts about an

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historical event from a long time ago and texts written currently about a similar topic to
compare and analysis what would be the real situation and why the author wrote that way,
which will offer students greater context and a sense of relevancy for the content they
are learning. (Eisenberg, 2014)
2. Drama
Drama playing is always interesting for students because they get to move around.
Students will write dramas based on the book they are reading and play it. They will need
to write the scenes, design the plot setting, discuss budget, assign actors and actresses and
practice to show it. In order to do this, students need to read the book and understand the
characters, emotions and conflicts and analysis critically to decide what need to be
included and present and in what way. This can be a club activity or a school-wide drama
show.
3. Science in Literature
In Young Adult literature, fancy advanced technology is an important highlight to appeal
readers. Students can try to find the science in literature and do some experiments to test
it. A science teacher will be invited to guide and support them. When students see other
disciplines involved in literature, they will feel interested and get engaged in it.
4. Music for Literature
Literature reading will be vivid when music is incorporated. There must some
appropriate melodies that can present the emotions or conflict in a literature. Discussing
and determining what music matches with a certain book is a process to demonstrate
students understanding of the book and express it externally. A music teacher will be
invited to explain about the music genres and support them.
5. Sustained Silence Reading

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Silence Reading is traditional, but necessary, even for the net Generation. They still need
time to read quietly. This activity doesnt need to be long; 15-30 minutes each day would
be good.
6. I-Can-Teach Program
Young adults love to show that they are grown up and mature. They can do things that
adults do, for example teaching. BRS has elementary school. It is a good opportunity for
high school to work with elementary school on reading program. High school students
can read aloud for young children from elementary school. 1 st to 3rd graders are the ideal
matching groups.

Regular Book Talk

Students value their peers views highly. Teachers recommendations make them feel compelled
even though they know the recommendations are good for them. But they are likely to take peers
recommendations because they feel no pressure from them. Therefore, regular Book Talk by
students will help to promote literature reading among students. Students can create their own
Video Book Talks, Book Trailers, or other ways with multimedia to visualize the book theyve
read. Technology instruction will be involved for support. The Book Talks can be shown to
students by teachers in class. Computers or iPads will be needed for this activity to create the
Book Talks.
Conclusion
Motivation, engagement and achievement form a circle. It starts from motivation, and causes
engagement, which result in high achievement. High achievement gives students confidence and makes
them more motivated to get engaged in reading. To be ideal, they will become self-motivated, highly
engaged and gain great achievements. In order to get there, as teachers, we need to:

make connections to students lives;

choices in reading selections and learning tasks; and

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having students interact with text and with each other about text by predicting,

visualizing, summarizing, etc.

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References:
1. Anderson, R., Fielding, L., & Wilson, P. (1988). Growth in reading and how children
spend their time outside of school. Reading Research Quarterly, 23(3), 285-303
2. Beers, K., Probst, R.E. and Rief, L. (2007) Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into
Practice
3. Bushman, J.H., and Haas, K.P. (2006) Using Young Adult Literature in the English
Classroom
4. Dalenberg, Diane. (2011) Influence of Motivation, Accelerated Reader and Book Clubs
on Reading Engagement
5. Eisenberg, Jill. (2014) Reading Paired Texts To Increase Student Engagement
6. Five Tips for Families on Encouraging Reading Engagement, American Education Week
(2013), School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison
7. Garfinkel, Simson., (2012) The Myth of Generation N (Not all kids are tech-savvy; how
will they handle wired future?), Technology Review, NBCNEWS.com
8. Guthrie, John. T. (2001) Contexts for Engagement and Motivation in Reading
9. Ideas to Consider for Motivating Readers,
http://www.accessola.org/web/OLAWEB/Together_for_Learning/Implementation/Reading_Enga
gement_Ideas/OLAWEB/OSLA/Together_for_Reading_Engagement_Ideas.aspx
10. Irvin, J.L., Meltzer, J. and Dukes, M.S., (2007) Taking Actions on Adolescent Literacy
11. Kowalski, Kirsten. D. M. (2000) Reading Engagement: What Influences the Choice to
Read?
12. Miranda, T., Williams-Rossi, D., Johnson, K.A., and McKenzie, N., (2011) Reluctant
Readers in Middle School: Successful Engagement with Text Using the E-Reader, Vol.1 No.6;
November 2011, International Journal of Applied Science and Technology
13. Miranda, T., Johnson, K.A., Rossi-Williams, D. (2012) E-Readers: Powering Up for
Engagement, Online June 2012/Volume 69, Strong Readers All

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14. Morrison, V. and Wheeler, L. Revisiting Read-Aloud: Instructional Strategies that
Encourages Students Engagement with Text, www.readingrocket.org
15. Pritchard, Ruie Jane, (1993) Developing Writing Prompts for Reading Response and
Analysis
16. Rutherford, Ryan and Worthy, Jo, (2013) Engagement with Young Adult Literature:
Outcomes and Processes
17. Ten Tips for Teachers on Encouraging Reading Engagement, American Education Week
(2013), School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Appendix I

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