March Is Reading Month: What Does Reading Look Like in Middle School ELA?

The month of March is National Reading Month. A month dedicated to encouraging Americans to read every day regardless of age. 

Reading is a great pastime and benefits all. Reading improves mental processes that help people acquire knowledge, manipulate information and reason. It also increases memory, vocabulary and empathy and decreases stress levels.

In celebration of March Is Reading Month, All Saints Academy has been intentional about providing even more opportunities for students to read every day. Students at both the Lower and the Upper Campuses have engaged in a variety of reading activities over the course of this month.

Specifically, in middle school English language arts class, students have been focused on reading and analyzing nonfiction texts. This reading unit, along with others taught over the course of the school year, immerses students in the study of a particular genre. Students at each grade level, read and analyze a mentor text as a whole class. The mentor text is used to model critical reading skills that students need to appropriately analyze a text within a particular genre. Students also complete vocabulary, hold Socratic Seminars (i.e. question-focused, student-led, and teacher-facilitated discussion based on appropriate texts) and write responses based on the mentor text daily. Simultaneously, students self-select nonfiction texts, after previewing texts in a “book tasting,”  to read and analyze within book clubs. 

By the end of each school year, middle school students will have been exposed to a variety of texts across different genres. Reading and analyzing texts of various genres boosts students’ comprehension skills and helps to continue to build confident readers.