Those reactions got me thinking as well this week. Research is crucial in guiding instructional decisions and I'm happy that we are in a different place than we were ten years ago. That said, I think even a good thing can go too far.
Should children read whole books in school????
Do we really need research to tell us that?
Sometimes the answer seems so obvious that I catch myself thinking about what my brother would say. (He’s an actuary—brilliant with numbers, but not steeped in literacy research.) I know what he would say:
Of course they should for lots of reasons.... builds stamina, deepens understanding of the world, nurtures empathy, do well on tests the list goes on and on.
If we need research to prove that we should use whole books in reading instruction we have gone too far.
Research supporting reading whole books is wonderful—but even if it didn’t exist, I would never suggest teachers abandon it. Sometimes, the evidence is right in front of us, and sometimes overcomplicating the obvious just slows down the impact for kids.
It would be a difficult experiment to justify: group A reads entire books and Group B reads just short selections. What IRB would approve?
But I am sure one can pull from diverse research literatures to make the case for in-depth thoughtful reading of full books. Doug Lemov and colleagues’ latest book makes an excellent case for it.
Here’s a random benefit to adult book readers vs newspaper/magazine readers: they may live longer!
A cinematic trailer or the feature-length film? A dozen small snacks of dubious nutritional quality or three well-balanced meals? A postcard of a beautiful vista or trekking there to see it for yourself?
Is this really a debate?
The advantages of reading whole books are manifold: a sense of continuity, stamina, and intellectual ownership. Kids learn how arguments develop across chapters, how themes echo and evolve, and how characters change in ways that only make sense over time, as the author intended. Whole books train them to hold ideas in their heads longer than a page, to wrestle with complexity instead of chasing quick answers, and to see how beginnings connect to endings. Just as importantly, the experience builds the kind of attention and persistence that fragments and highlight reels simply don’t demand.
I'd say England is still pretty pro-book. My son has graduated from his phonics scheme; he finished it at the end of Year 1. He's now in Year 2 and has moved onto whole class reading, where they read full books. He is sent home with full books every week to read independently and we are asked to monitor his progress.
I think the SATS at the end of Year 6 probably concentrate minds as to achieve the required level of vocabulary and syntax you would need to be reading and be read to quite frequently.
I think England as the anglosphere home of the phonics renaissance might also be able to provide a glimpse into phonics and book-heavy curricula!
It's actually pathetic to read that people cannot comprehend the need for both systematic phonics instruction and for students to be reading books. Personally, I think districts have spent money on dumb programs and then have to justify the money that was spent. How can this be fixed? I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with having to admit that a program isn't working well and that changes need to be made. (Maybe there are more nefarious things at play related to money?? But I'm just going to assume people in charge are dumb and make dumb choices.) Unfortunately, I don't know how that could be fixed once the money is spent. I'm just tired of the blame game from all sides at the expense of children that aren't learning how to read. It's so disheartening. 😞
Asking if reading whole books is research based is like asking if being healthy is research based. Reading whole books is the whole point of using research based practices to teach reading. So our students can read whole books.
The challenge here is schools don’t have money to pay for books. They take an excerpt from kindles, paste it into a Google doc and ask students to annotate the document. Not only is it copyright infringement but it’s also feeding the excerpt
Did you read our previous column? It doesn’t cost any more for schools to use the book-rich curricula (ex Bookworms or Fishtank) than Wonders or Into Reading. In fact, our best data says it costs less. So this really isn’t about funding. Schools can afford core curricula, they just need to make good choices.
It may be fair that after paying for a crummy core program with no books, schools have limited funds left over for books. But I stand by my understanding here (after 6 years as a K-12 CMO, once for a curriculum provider, I feel I have an informed take).
Thanks for the kind words, and I didn’t sense you disagreeing, exactly. If I sound emphatic, it’s just because I really think it’s important to push back on any “schools can’t do this” narratives.
Schools don't have money to buy full books for teachers to teach reading and for students to practice reading?? That is a total systems failure. Our schools are not doing right by teachers or by students if they can't figure out a way to buy full books for ELA instruction.
Yup. But I hear it from schools all the time. I also hear about this Kindle to Google docs hack. And not just from underfunded public schools but from well-funded private schools as well. I don’t think many schools teach whole books consistently, particularly in elementary and middle school. High schools teach a few.
But is there research backed evidence that students who read whole books learn to read better than students who are guided through a curriculum like Wonders? I'm the curriculum coordinator at my school and nothing I have read here has convinced me that the pivot to knowledge building curriculums that are "book lite" until the upper grades is detrimental or inversely the book heavy curriculum produce book loving readers of whole books over just having an updated school library and a librarian who can guide students to books based on their interests. I'm open to be proven wrong. Convince me! (With data).
I appreciate your openness — that’s rare and refreshing. Here’s what the research says:
Studies consistently show that volume and stamina of reading matter, and students build both through extended engagement with texts, not snippets. Guthrie & Wigfield’s work on engagement and motivation, Allington’s findings on “reading volume,” and Daniels & Zemelman’s research on authentic literacy all point to this: students who spend more time reading connected, meaningful texts develop stronger comprehension and a deeper love of reading.
Programs like Wonders often focus on discrete skill practice with short passages — but this approach limits students’ opportunities to apply those skills in sustained, coherent reading experiences. Research by Fisher & Frey (2020) and Wexler (2019) shows that when instruction isolates skills without giving students full texts to make meaning from, comprehension gains plateau.
On the flip side, studies of classrooms that center full novels or nonfiction books (see Wilhelm & Smith, 2016; Allington, 2012) show students make deeper inferential leaps, better vocabulary retention, and stronger engagement — especially when teachers pair texts with explicit instruction.
The science of reading tells us how students learn to decode; reading whole books helps them learn to think. Both matter.
Our school recently purchased Into Reading. More than anything, what I am finding is that the curriculum bloat doesn’t necessarily leave TIME for students to read a whole book, though this is very much what I would like them to do. As a reading specialist, one of my goals this year is to find ways to build engagement, motivation, and stamina for reading whole books at every K-8 age and stage. I am preparing to do some kind of whole school reading incentive program (and would welcome ideas!) to build a culture of reading amongst our students. Our world is heavily saturated with snippets of text. As someone who doesn’t even own a smartphone (it’s true!), I am acutely aware of the how pervasive the scrolling is all around me. I see it on public transportation, in schools, in stores, on streets, in restaurants…really, everywhere. In fact, I make a point of thanking a parent whenever I see them out and about with their children and their children are actually reading. It has become a rare, but beautiful sight to see. How are we ever going to teach students to think critically, engage in discussion, ask questions, indulge their curiosity, develop their imaginations, and so much more, without teaching them to read proficiently and giving them an opportunity to read books from start to finish? Reading only text excerpts, in my mind, is way too close to scrolling. Let’s slow down. Dig in. Give them time to sink their teeth into real literature. Find the joy in reading.
Led projects in 2 districts that did both…science of reading AND whole books, both central texts and book clubs. What we saw was MORE reading, kids wanting to read ALL the books listed for book clubs for each interdisciplinary unit. Think about the math. 5 interdisciplinary units, each w a central text and each with 5 book choices. That’s at least 10 whole novels a year starting in grade 3. Now multiply that by 6 years of this approach. Thats 60 books by the end of grade 8. And we extended it into hs. So we are talking even more. I wish my own children had this experience. Agree-we need to commit to reading whole books. It’s a yes/and approach not an either/or.
Agree. We can probably all agree that books are important, but I don't think there's any real strong evidence which says basing your whole ELA curriculum with novels at the centre is better than other methods. We can make well reasoned arguments about why it might be good to focus on novels and full length texts, but that isn't science.
In a previous comment, the work of alligington and others was cited to suggest that reading volume and the reading of whole texts is an evidence based approach. This correlational research was also used to promote significant independent reading and independent reading levels. It became the research base for the reading workshop approach.
I think we need to be careful about falling into the traps that plagued our past efforts to reform reading instruction. Stating things that feel good and feel intuitively true (like making sure our curriculum focus on authentic whole books or preserving time for students to read a high volume of texts) but lack research evidence should be outside of 'the research says' matra. Go ahead and make well reasoned arguments for including books in the curriculum, but don't attach research to an opinion when there is none.
Just curious if you have looking into the impact that technology has had on the reading process? I have been looking into edReports and other organization that are often used to determine high quality curriculum materials. Organizations such as edReports has significant tech funding and the tech industry has inundated the education system with out any evidence that using a computer screen is superior than traditional tools. Children as young as K are being handed devices to complete reading and math lessons on rather than actual books and pen/paper. I have been writing about the negative impact of tech on many critical skills in schools. In this article I highlight some of the tech industry funding behind the narrative https://www.public.news/p/big-tech-hubris-and-greed-behind I firmly believe that schools K-8 should remove 1:1 devices and return to more traditional methods to support better learning and outcomes. I have also created a timeline that provides more details here: https://environmentalprogress.org/education-timeline
I am a high school ELA teacher in a district where teaching whole books was specifically prohibited because our superintendent thinks spending large blocks of class time just reading is not rigorous enough. Current guidance says we can do one whole novel in a course as long as we don’t spend more than 30 mins a day reading.
I do think the emphasis on fidelity to high quality curriculum is a double edged sword that has led us to this moment. Teacher expertise is devalued and rigor is being defined in very specific ways that I think are divorced from considering long-term impacts.
Those reactions got me thinking as well this week. Research is crucial in guiding instructional decisions and I'm happy that we are in a different place than we were ten years ago. That said, I think even a good thing can go too far.
Should children read whole books in school????
Do we really need research to tell us that?
Sometimes the answer seems so obvious that I catch myself thinking about what my brother would say. (He’s an actuary—brilliant with numbers, but not steeped in literacy research.) I know what he would say:
Of course they should for lots of reasons.... builds stamina, deepens understanding of the world, nurtures empathy, do well on tests the list goes on and on.
If we need research to prove that we should use whole books in reading instruction we have gone too far.
Research supporting reading whole books is wonderful—but even if it didn’t exist, I would never suggest teachers abandon it. Sometimes, the evidence is right in front of us, and sometimes overcomplicating the obvious just slows down the impact for kids.
Keep beating this drum! Thank you!
It would be a difficult experiment to justify: group A reads entire books and Group B reads just short selections. What IRB would approve?
But I am sure one can pull from diverse research literatures to make the case for in-depth thoughtful reading of full books. Doug Lemov and colleagues’ latest book makes an excellent case for it.
Here’s a random benefit to adult book readers vs newspaper/magazine readers: they may live longer!
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6245064/
A few researchers have made your point about the difficulty of justifying such a study.
A cinematic trailer or the feature-length film? A dozen small snacks of dubious nutritional quality or three well-balanced meals? A postcard of a beautiful vista or trekking there to see it for yourself?
Is this really a debate?
The advantages of reading whole books are manifold: a sense of continuity, stamina, and intellectual ownership. Kids learn how arguments develop across chapters, how themes echo and evolve, and how characters change in ways that only make sense over time, as the author intended. Whole books train them to hold ideas in their heads longer than a page, to wrestle with complexity instead of chasing quick answers, and to see how beginnings connect to endings. Just as importantly, the experience builds the kind of attention and persistence that fragments and highlight reels simply don’t demand.
Come on, folks…
I hear you...my comments are very similar. It's puzzling to me.
I'd say England is still pretty pro-book. My son has graduated from his phonics scheme; he finished it at the end of Year 1. He's now in Year 2 and has moved onto whole class reading, where they read full books. He is sent home with full books every week to read independently and we are asked to monitor his progress.
I think the SATS at the end of Year 6 probably concentrate minds as to achieve the required level of vocabulary and syntax you would need to be reading and be read to quite frequently.
I think England as the anglosphere home of the phonics renaissance might also be able to provide a glimpse into phonics and book-heavy curricula!
It's actually pathetic to read that people cannot comprehend the need for both systematic phonics instruction and for students to be reading books. Personally, I think districts have spent money on dumb programs and then have to justify the money that was spent. How can this be fixed? I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with having to admit that a program isn't working well and that changes need to be made. (Maybe there are more nefarious things at play related to money?? But I'm just going to assume people in charge are dumb and make dumb choices.) Unfortunately, I don't know how that could be fixed once the money is spent. I'm just tired of the blame game from all sides at the expense of children that aren't learning how to read. It's so disheartening. 😞
Asking if reading whole books is research based is like asking if being healthy is research based. Reading whole books is the whole point of using research based practices to teach reading. So our students can read whole books.
The challenge here is schools don’t have money to pay for books. They take an excerpt from kindles, paste it into a Google doc and ask students to annotate the document. Not only is it copyright infringement but it’s also feeding the excerpt
culture.
Did you read our previous column? It doesn’t cost any more for schools to use the book-rich curricula (ex Bookworms or Fishtank) than Wonders or Into Reading. In fact, our best data says it costs less. So this really isn’t about funding. Schools can afford core curricula, they just need to make good choices.
Well that’s not what they tell me! And we successfully sell books into them. But I agree. Mostly I think teachers don’t know how to teach books.
It may be fair that after paying for a crummy core program with no books, schools have limited funds left over for books. But I stand by my understanding here (after 6 years as a K-12 CMO, once for a curriculum provider, I feel I have an informed take).
I wasn’t disagreeing with you at all. I adore your work. Apologies. I was agreeing and adding insights.
Thanks for the kind words, and I didn’t sense you disagreeing, exactly. If I sound emphatic, it’s just because I really think it’s important to push back on any “schools can’t do this” narratives.
Schools don't have money to buy full books for teachers to teach reading and for students to practice reading?? That is a total systems failure. Our schools are not doing right by teachers or by students if they can't figure out a way to buy full books for ELA instruction.
Yup. But I hear it from schools all the time. I also hear about this Kindle to Google docs hack. And not just from underfunded public schools but from well-funded private schools as well. I don’t think many schools teach whole books consistently, particularly in elementary and middle school. High schools teach a few.
I hear it too! If we step outside education though it sounds like a joke that schools dont have money for books.
It’s beyond sad. Unacceptable.
Such an important discussion! Here's my take: Of Mice and Mentors: Best Laid Plans (https://harriettjanetos.substack.com/p/of-mice-and-mentors-best-laid-plans?r=5spuf)
But is there research backed evidence that students who read whole books learn to read better than students who are guided through a curriculum like Wonders? I'm the curriculum coordinator at my school and nothing I have read here has convinced me that the pivot to knowledge building curriculums that are "book lite" until the upper grades is detrimental or inversely the book heavy curriculum produce book loving readers of whole books over just having an updated school library and a librarian who can guide students to books based on their interests. I'm open to be proven wrong. Convince me! (With data).
I appreciate your openness — that’s rare and refreshing. Here’s what the research says:
Studies consistently show that volume and stamina of reading matter, and students build both through extended engagement with texts, not snippets. Guthrie & Wigfield’s work on engagement and motivation, Allington’s findings on “reading volume,” and Daniels & Zemelman’s research on authentic literacy all point to this: students who spend more time reading connected, meaningful texts develop stronger comprehension and a deeper love of reading.
Programs like Wonders often focus on discrete skill practice with short passages — but this approach limits students’ opportunities to apply those skills in sustained, coherent reading experiences. Research by Fisher & Frey (2020) and Wexler (2019) shows that when instruction isolates skills without giving students full texts to make meaning from, comprehension gains plateau.
On the flip side, studies of classrooms that center full novels or nonfiction books (see Wilhelm & Smith, 2016; Allington, 2012) show students make deeper inferential leaps, better vocabulary retention, and stronger engagement — especially when teachers pair texts with explicit instruction.
The science of reading tells us how students learn to decode; reading whole books helps them learn to think. Both matter.
Our school recently purchased Into Reading. More than anything, what I am finding is that the curriculum bloat doesn’t necessarily leave TIME for students to read a whole book, though this is very much what I would like them to do. As a reading specialist, one of my goals this year is to find ways to build engagement, motivation, and stamina for reading whole books at every K-8 age and stage. I am preparing to do some kind of whole school reading incentive program (and would welcome ideas!) to build a culture of reading amongst our students. Our world is heavily saturated with snippets of text. As someone who doesn’t even own a smartphone (it’s true!), I am acutely aware of the how pervasive the scrolling is all around me. I see it on public transportation, in schools, in stores, on streets, in restaurants…really, everywhere. In fact, I make a point of thanking a parent whenever I see them out and about with their children and their children are actually reading. It has become a rare, but beautiful sight to see. How are we ever going to teach students to think critically, engage in discussion, ask questions, indulge their curiosity, develop their imaginations, and so much more, without teaching them to read proficiently and giving them an opportunity to read books from start to finish? Reading only text excerpts, in my mind, is way too close to scrolling. Let’s slow down. Dig in. Give them time to sink their teeth into real literature. Find the joy in reading.
Secondary literacy specialist here and I believe firmly in teaching whole novels, complex grade level texts, to my middle and high school intervention students while using science of reading approaches to address their reading gaps! The results have been incredible! https://wyofile.com/this-pinedale-teachers-approach-is-helping-high-school-students-fill-reading-gaps/
Led projects in 2 districts that did both…science of reading AND whole books, both central texts and book clubs. What we saw was MORE reading, kids wanting to read ALL the books listed for book clubs for each interdisciplinary unit. Think about the math. 5 interdisciplinary units, each w a central text and each with 5 book choices. That’s at least 10 whole novels a year starting in grade 3. Now multiply that by 6 years of this approach. Thats 60 books by the end of grade 8. And we extended it into hs. So we are talking even more. I wish my own children had this experience. Agree-we need to commit to reading whole books. It’s a yes/and approach not an either/or.
Agree. We can probably all agree that books are important, but I don't think there's any real strong evidence which says basing your whole ELA curriculum with novels at the centre is better than other methods. We can make well reasoned arguments about why it might be good to focus on novels and full length texts, but that isn't science.
In a previous comment, the work of alligington and others was cited to suggest that reading volume and the reading of whole texts is an evidence based approach. This correlational research was also used to promote significant independent reading and independent reading levels. It became the research base for the reading workshop approach.
I think we need to be careful about falling into the traps that plagued our past efforts to reform reading instruction. Stating things that feel good and feel intuitively true (like making sure our curriculum focus on authentic whole books or preserving time for students to read a high volume of texts) but lack research evidence should be outside of 'the research says' matra. Go ahead and make well reasoned arguments for including books in the curriculum, but don't attach research to an opinion when there is none.
Just curious if you have looking into the impact that technology has had on the reading process? I have been looking into edReports and other organization that are often used to determine high quality curriculum materials. Organizations such as edReports has significant tech funding and the tech industry has inundated the education system with out any evidence that using a computer screen is superior than traditional tools. Children as young as K are being handed devices to complete reading and math lessons on rather than actual books and pen/paper. I have been writing about the negative impact of tech on many critical skills in schools. In this article I highlight some of the tech industry funding behind the narrative https://www.public.news/p/big-tech-hubris-and-greed-behind I firmly believe that schools K-8 should remove 1:1 devices and return to more traditional methods to support better learning and outcomes. I have also created a timeline that provides more details here: https://environmentalprogress.org/education-timeline
I just listened to this and I think it adds some interesting nuance to this important discussion.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/66rXzNBKdy2WPpsIYiRBdX?si=3HQsBxE6Tm-mv7xPmLNu1A&t=2069&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A2t9uJWY0qNJItFURjAEq7z
I am a high school ELA teacher in a district where teaching whole books was specifically prohibited because our superintendent thinks spending large blocks of class time just reading is not rigorous enough. Current guidance says we can do one whole novel in a course as long as we don’t spend more than 30 mins a day reading.
I do think the emphasis on fidelity to high quality curriculum is a double edged sword that has led us to this moment. Teacher expertise is devalued and rigor is being defined in very specific ways that I think are divorced from considering long-term impacts.