My first year of teaching was in a second grade classroom. Oh, the things I learned that year! Second graders could be so cute. They would give me lots of hugs every day. They grossed me out by pulling on their loose teeth. They sometimes told me extremely funny stories about their families ( I didn’t believe ALL of them). But this one student always liked to bring me shiny red apples. They were sooooo delicious, and I looked forward to getting those apples until one day . . .
Yes, it was bound to happen. I took one big bite, and there it was. A worm. Not just any worm – a LIVE worm. It’s wiggling body stretching itself from the innermost part of that apple as if it had been trapped and was eager to experience freedom. After quickly spitting out what was in my mouth, I was relieved to find that the worm in the apple was totally intact – whew! But after that day, when that student brought me an apple, I did not quickly bite into it as I had in the past, but instead, I now carefully cut it open to see what may or may not be inside.
So what does a worm in an apple have to do with literacy? Well, you see, the apple that I bit into many years ago had no outside indication of contamination. The skin of the apple was bright red with no bruises or tiny holes – I always checked. The apple seemed perfect. Yet, within that perfection there was an imperfection, and that imperfection was only discovered once the apple was opened (or bitten in my case).
Let’s think of our students as those apples, and the skin of those apples are their reading abilities. It is easy to look at reading abilities on the surface. A student reads fluently. A student gets all the multiple choice comprehension questions correct. A student seems to be an avid reader during the time of silent reading. But what is underneath that surface? Is the inside as perfect as the outside, or could there be something on the inside that keeps that student from truly being a proficient reader?
The only way to know what is on the inside of an apple is to look – I mean REALLY look. Don’t be deceived by the red shine and the unblemished skin. Trust me. I know! The only way to truly know a student’s reading abilities is to assess the skills he or she possesses. Just because a student reads fluently does not mean that the student is fully comprehending the text. Just because a student can correctly answer a multiple choice question about a text does not necessarily mean that he or she comprehended the text. Students can be good guessers!
I dare say that there is not a reader – young or old – who does not have a “worm” hiding in them. Every reader can always become a better reader by working on some type of reading skill. It’s easy to overlook the shiny red apple readers in our classroom and zoom in on those who have an obvious blemish on the surface, but let’s not forget that those perfect shiny red apples can be hiding a worm, too.