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Is This for School or for Me? A Case Study of One Student’s Reading Habits

*Name has been changed for confidentiality purposes.

Reading Partner Introduction

Ashley Snyder* is a 19-year-old student at Harford Community College in Bel Air,

Maryland. Her major is aerospace engineering and mathematics; she wants to transfer to the

University of Maryland. She loves to spend time with her two youngest siblings (ages 7 and 10)

and spoil them immensely. She enjoys scrolling through TikTok and watching Marvel movies.

She’s involved with the engineering club at her college and likes to spend time with friends.

She’s great with kids. She also enjoys swimming. As a child, she hated reading until her sister

introduced her to books like Percy Jackson and the Olympians and the Warriors series by Erin

Hunter. Ashley was homeschooled until tenth grade. When she was in primary grades, her mom

noticed Ashley had difficulty keeping up with independent work and completing it. She would

get overwhelmed by a whole page of work, but if her mom gave her the information question by

question she did not get overwhelmed. As her teacher for most of her schooling, Ashley’s mom

believes that she may have ADD but not ADHD.

Partner’s Reading Habits and Lifestyle

Ashley learned how to read at home from her mom. At first she hated reading, but as she

got older, she found books that interested her and started to like reading more. She guesses that

there are about 100 books in her house (as her sister, I can confirm that there are definitely more

than 100), and she has read about 26 books in the last twelve months. Ashley believes that

people enjoy reading for several reasons, including being bored, having no life, or they genuinely

enjoy reading. She believes that to be a good reader, you have to be a fast reader. She likes to

read fantasy, especially anything with beautiful Fae men or women in it. She says that she likes
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to read these because they make her life better but worse at the same time because she wishes she

had one (a beautiful Fae person). She decides what books she wants to read based on whether or

not they interest her. Her favorite authors include Sarah J. Maas, Sabaa Tahir, and Rick Riordan.

She has reread books by all of these authors. At home, Ashley reads when she is bored or

depressed because books make her sad thoughts go away. She does not often read for school,

unless she is failing a class. Generally, she likes reading as long as what she likes is in the book;

a good plot is also important to her. She says, “I like reading but I need to know if the book is

good or I will lose interest very quickly. I struggle with reading, but I like to read if I know if it is

going to be a well written book.” She also says that she finds reading extremely fun when she

understands what is happening.

Comorbidity of Dyslexia/ADHD

As I was interviewing Ashley, she told me that she thinks she may have a bit of ADHD

and dyslexia (although both are unofficially diagnosed). She has a hard time focusing, gets

distracted easily, and says that letters and numbers get scrambled around. This could be a major

factor in how Ashley’s reading habits work. In their article, “Comorbidity of ADHD and

Dyslexia,” authors Eva Germano, Antonella Gagliano, and Paolo Curatolo state that having a

reading disability and ADHD are two of the most common disorders that children are diagnosed

with (475). They add that those with ADHD can struggle with multiple issues including

“problem solving, planning orienting, alerting, cognitive flexibility, sustained attention, response

inhibition, and visual working memory” (Germano et al. 480). Other issues can include deficits

in executive function “impaired signaling of delayed rewards arising from disturbance in

motivational processes” (Germano et al. 481). On the other hand, dyslexia is when someone has

trouble processing things phonetically and decoding single words. It can also be caused by
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“disturbances in visual processing,” where the “perception of visual, rapid moving stimuli and

stimuli of low spatial frequency and low contrast is impaired” (Germano et al. 481). Germano

and others state that “cognitive processes and motor control in the cerebellum” can also be

“disturbed in individuals with dyslexia” (481).

ADHD and dyslexia are very closely linked and can have a big impact on people

diagnosed with such disorders, especially students. Ashley’s short attention span, inability to

focus, and tendency to skip substantial amounts of information when reading could be because

she has ADHD and/or dyslexia. This is something to keep in mind when analyzing her reading

behaviors.

Pattern #1: Partner’s Beliefs about What Makes a Good Reader

The first pattern I noticed is that Ashley believes that being a “good” reader means being

a fast reader. She tries to picture what’s going on in her head and make “movies” out of the book

when reading fiction but does not take a lot of time to analyze course material if reading a

textbook. She does not like reading out loud because she frequently stumbles over words and

reads silently because she is “too slow of a reader.” In the What Kind of Reader Are You?

survey, Ashley thinks that to be a successful reader, you have to be able to read quickly, read

different types of texts, read challenging books, and concentrate on your reading. She noted that

being able to read aloud well, read with feeling, know the meaning of most words, use reading

strategies, enjoy what you’re reading, and understand everything you read is not required to

make someone a successful reader.

Connections Between Pattern #1 and the Four-Quadrant Model of Literacy

I believe that Ashley feels and thinks this way about her reading because her personal

dimension of the four-quadrant model of literacy (personal, social, cognitive, and knowledge-
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building dimensions) has been strongly influenced by school. While her reader history reflects

both good and bad inclinations towards reading (reading for fun versus reading for school), her

reader identity is clearly something she does not feel confident in. When reading textbooks for

school, she lacks confidence in how well she can perform to the teacher’s standards. She avoids

taking the time to think critically and therefore does not gain confidence in her ability to think

critically. Ashley believes that because she is a “slow” reader, she is not a good reader, which

impacts her capability to develop metacognition, hindering her ability to truly delve into

understanding her awareness of her own thought processes. Additionally, believing that she is a

slow reader and not taking the time to analyze the text will cause her to avoid certain books and

literary texts because she feels like it’s a waste of time or she won’t do well on it. This stunts the

development of her reading fluency and reader range.

However, when she reads for fun, Ashley does a great job of engaging with the cognitive

and knowledge-building dimensions of the four-quadrant model. She informed me that she

makes “movies” in her head when reading fiction. When doing this, she breaks down the plot

and the context and forms the big picture of the book. Her comprehension of the text soars and

she has a reading purpose, which is to find out what happens next. She’s activating schema and

background knowledge by using her prior knowledge of how movies work and she’s developing

content and topic knowledge about the text. She’s also demonstrating good interactions with

Wilhelm’s dimensions, especially the evocative dimensions. She shows interest in the story,

predicts the plot, relates to the characters, and constructs mental images of characters, settings,

and situations in the story. Ashley recognizes that reading is a transaction, making connections to

herself as a reader and turning reading into an experience rather than an assignment or chore.

One caveat is that in order for her to enter the story world of a book, it has to immediately
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capture her attention; if it doesn’t, she skips a lot of the text or doesn’t read it at all. Because

she’s reading for fun, Ashley has the ability to take more time with the story and more

importantly, pick and choose what she wants to read. Again, a caveat of this is that she will avoid

books and texts that she doesn’t immediately connect with, which will hinder her growth as a

reader.

Pattern #2: Reading for Completion and Tendency to Skip over Text

The second pattern I noticed is that Ashley will skip over or ignore things she doesn’t

immediately understand. She does not implement many reading strategies when she reads. She

simply dives right in. In the reading strategy awareness inventory I gave her, Ashley emphasized

that she ignores words she doesn’t understand, disregards an entire sentence if she doesn’t

understand it, and skips parts of important information she doesn’t understand. In answer to the

question “Before you start to read, what kind of plans do you make to help you read better?”

Ashley said that no specific plan is needed; just start reading toward completion of the

assignment. She would go back to reread an entire passage over again if she deemed it important

to remember, but if it seems confusing, she skips those sections entirely because she deems them

usually not important. In the survey asking questions about using reading strategies before,

during, and after reading, her answers varied. She doesn’t make connections before she reads,

reporting that she never previews the material by thinking about the title, reviewing any pictures,

or reading the introduction and similar material. Ashley also said that she never gives herself a

purpose for reading, such as deciding what she expects to learn about the theme and how it

relates to her personally. Sometimes she does recall information that she already knows about

what she’s planning to read. I think she is relating this to school reading. After she reads, she

sometimes discusses what she read, but mostly that’s just it—she’s done reading. This happens
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especially when reading something she does not make connections to or doesn’t have a “real”

purpose for reading other than completion. She doesn’t review her predictions or questions or

use what she learned for future projects.

Ashley does say that one strategy she should use more often when reading is

summarizing the whole page before moving on to the next and actually reading a whole

paragraph; she tends to read just the first and last sentence of a paragraph to determine its

importance. However, while reading other than for school, Ashley is much more engaged and

active—I think her answers stem from her experience with reading fiction and things she likes.

She answered “always” to asking questions about what is happening, why characters act as they

do, or why the author chose to include particular details or to use certain words, visualizing the

characters and events, and comparing characters to herself or to people she knows.

Connections Between Pattern #2 and the Four-Quadrant Model of Literacy

I think Ashley’s tendency to skip over things she does not understand is because she feels

frustrated that she doesn’t immediately understand the concepts (she gets impatient), she feels

overwhelmed by all the new and big information, or she simply deems it not worth her time. The

cognitive and knowledge-building dimensions of the four-quadrant model are a big part of this

pattern. Ashley tends to avoid spending the time to monitor her own comprehension and break

things down; she also often does not use schema or background knowledge to help her make

connections to the text. Another thing I noticed is that just the knowledge that something is for

school changed Ashley’s reactions, especially in our poem pop-up exchange and the reading

protocol exercise with the stars. The story that I used for the reading protocol was an excerpt

from a book that she likes and has reread many times. But when asked for her thoughts, she

basically just summarized what she read up until that point in a sentence or two—there were no
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comments about how much she loves certain characters or certain plot points, which she will

verbally express when talking about the book to people. Similarly, in the poem exchange, she

simply reiterated the main and most obvious points of the poem (“she refuses to be conquered”;

“she cannot be defeated”, “this is a very powerful quote” etc.). She did mention at one part that

she didn’t understand what a certain statement meant, which was good of her to acknowledge

and write down. There was little evidence of making connections to prior knowledge, using

problem-solving to restore comprehension, or giving herself a purpose for reading what she was

reading, which are all core components of the cognitive dimension. Additionally, she did not

break down either the poem or the story excerpt or get to the big picture of why she was reading

what she was reading; she simply read them to complete what I was asking her to do. Even

though I chose a passage from a book she likes and a poem that is fairly engaging (“Invictus” by

William Earnest Henley), Ashley showed little motivation to read them. I had to ask and remind

her several times to do it. I believe this lack of motivation stems from the assignment-like format

of the readings.

There was also very little evidence of Wilhelm’s dimensions in her responses to the poem

pop-up exchange and the short story. For the short story, I expected her to make better

connections with Wilhelm’s evocative dimensions, especially showing interest in the story and

relating to the characters since Ashley has read this book before and it’s one of her favorites. But

she simply summarized the paragraphs that I starred. Similarly, I feel as though “Invictus” is a

fairly easy poem to make connections to Wilhelm’s connective dimensions (particularly

connecting literature to life, where the reader makes specific connections from their personal

experience and character experience), especially since it is a poem about strength, courage, and

overcoming trials and tribulations. Again, I believe this was a consequence of the readings
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feeling like a school assignment to her; she did not have the motivation or desire to put much

thought or effort into it. As for reading strategies, she does ask questions of the text depending

on how important she deems it, and when she reads for fun, she definitely visualizes well. She is

engaged with the cognitive and knowledge-building dimensions of the four-quadrant model by

forming an idea of the plot and activating schema and background knowledge to connect with

what she’s reading. Her use of Wilhelm’s evocative connections when reading for fun also

skyrockets. Since she can pick what she wants to read, she is much more likely to engage with

the text by entering the story world, showing interest in the story, and relating to the characters.

Potential Consequences of Partner’s Reading Behaviors in the Classroom

The consequences of these patterns could negatively affect Ashley’s quality of learning

and her accomplishment in the classroom. If she does have a slight reading disability but that’s

not addressed, that could make her seem like a lazy or “bad” student to a teacher if they don’t

realize that she needs more time to process content. Her view of herself as a slow reader could

also hinder her productivity and motivation. Realizing that she doesn’t need to be a fast reader in

order to be a good reader would be a great beginning to reshaping her reader identity. Giving her

a chart that asks her about her reader identity, history, beliefs, and goals and then applying it to

herself would work well to help her figure out her reader identity a bit more. Ashley also

mentioned that noise distracts her easily, so giving her an environment where noise is minimal

would be helpful as well.

As for reading strategies, she does a good job of asking questions of the text and

visualizing, but I would like to see more of her making connections (to herself, with the text, to

world connections, prior knowledge, etc.) and determining importance (finding main and

supporting ideas, discriminate topic from details, look for repeated words/ideas, etc.). She does a
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lot of skimming to find important information, so having her really break the text into chunks

and then those chunks into chunks would be helpful—synthesizing the information is important.

For example, I would suggest reading a chapter a section at a time, and really taking the time to

highlight and annotate the paragraphs within that one section. Then, after finishing that section,

go back through and see if she can summarize the main point of the section before moving on to

the next one. I would also suggest employing the “Watch Yourself Read” strategy. It’s important

to be aware of your attention span, engagement, and comprehension. If Ashley identifies where

she gets stuck or starts to lose comprehension of the text, that’s a good indicator to take a break

or use a reading strategy like making connections or asking questions of the text, working to

really connect the text to meaningful things like herself as a reader or connections to related

content. Having a stronger sense of confidence as a reader and working on really focusing on

information to understand it is what seems to be the most prominent in Ashley’s reading life.

Reading as a Transaction in School

In his book, You Gotta Be the Book: Teaching Engaged and Reflective Reading with

Adolescents, Jeffrey D. Wilhelm writes that “reading literature is not the reception of meaning,

but the reader’s participation in a ‘transaction’ with text that produces meaning” (144). One of

the most important things I believe teachers need to do in order to help our students view reading

as a transaction is foster a growth mindset about their students’ reader identities. I feel as though

building a student’s reader identity from the start of their education gets looked over. I’ve

personally never considered my identity as a reader or what I’ve thought about literature or

examined my relationship with literary texts until college. Not only would Ashley have

benefitted from being asked about her beliefs, goals, identity, and history as a reader from a

young age, but any student would as well. Starting this practice from the earliest grades so that
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by the time students reach middle and high school would help students feel more confident in

themselves as readers and know how to have a relationship with literary texts. As teachers, we

need to constantly be asking our students questions like, “What counts as literature?”, “What’s

worth studying in literature?”, and “What are we meant to do with it?” Emphasizing the personal

and cognitive dimensions is imperative to helping students recognize that reading is

transactional. If a teacher asked Ashley the aforementioned questions and she took the time to

ponder them seriously, she would have a deeper engagement with a text.

Allowing students as much choice as possible is also an important factor in helping

students grow in their reader identities. From the reading behaviors I observed in Ashley, it’s

clear that when she has the choice to read what she wants, she becomes an active reader who

engages with the text. Giving her autonomy in the classroom would help her do the same at

school. We need to show students that reading can be more than just an assignment; it can be

fun, engaging, and can help them learn more about themselves and others. By allowing them to

choose what they read, we are allowing students to create a relationship between the text and

their own experiences.

For students who are reluctant readers despite our best efforts, we should use a variety of

instructional strategies and assessments. In our assessments, we must choose carefully what we

consider growth when we create rubrics and guidelines. Do we value a close reading of the text

and a deep analysis of a specific passage? Do we value asking questions such as “What is the

author teaching us? What is the work criticizing?” Do we value more personal opinions by

asking questions like “What emotions or feelings does the work arouse in you? Is this work

about serious things? Is it significant literature?”

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As for instructional strategies, we recently discussed using drama and visuals to help

engage students with texts. In particular, drama is a great way to help students make a connection

with the text. A popular strategy is roleplay, where students act out a certain scene or embody

certain characters to better understand the concepts. For students who are quieter and more

reserved, and who might freeze up or shut down if asked to perform, guided imagery or

correspondence might work better. Guided imagery is when students are asked to imagine scenes

and write or draw their ideas about the scene (Wilhelm 158). Correspondence is when students,

in the role of a certain character, write and respond to letters, journals, etc. (Wilhelm 158).

Drama as an instructional strategy will help turn reading into an active process rather than a

passive one. Students will better be able to enter, see and elaborate on the story world, relate to

characters, and connect literature to their lives.

Conclusion

Moving toward a student-centered classroom is imperative, especially in regard to

teaching literature. For students like Ashley, who struggle to make reading in school mean

anything and who have a low sense of self-esteem as a reader, the instructional strategies and

assessments we use are important in helping our students connect with literary texts and become

active readers. Encouraging students and giving them the opportunities to develop their identity

as readers is another essential component of pushing our students towards growth. Our goal as

teachers is to help everyone become the best reader they can be, and we can do that by constantly

modifying and adjusting how we teach literature to our students.

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Works Cited

Germanò, Eva, et al. “Comorbidity of ADHD and Dyslexia.” Developmental Neuropsychology,

vol. 35, no. 5, Sept. 2010, pp. 475–93. EBSCOhost,

https://doi.org/10.1080/87565641.2010.494748.

Wilhelm, Jeffrey D. You Gotta Be the Book: Teaching Engaged and Reflective Reading with

Adolescents. Teachers College Press, 2016.