Making sure our reading “CLICKS”

Giordano, Linda. (2011). Making sure our reading “CLICKS”. The Reading Teacher, 64(8), 612-619.

I’m all for any strategy that helps young readers to self-assess and self-select texts for independent reading, as the CLICKS strategy described here has the potential to do. CLICKS certainly beats the common practice of “leveling”, in which teachers and librarians try to control which books children select based on sorting children into “levels” based on test scores and then only let them read books that supposedly match those levels. In leveling systems, there are forbidden books that children are actually not “allowed” to read (my own granddaughter echoed the use of those words by adults in her elementary school) because those books are either seen as “too hard” or “too easy.” The system here at least puts that determination into the child’s hands, and if the child is really allowed ultimately to choose, even if an adult disagrees, then I am fine with the system described here.

CLICKS is an acronym, with each letter standing for one of six aspects that a reader might take into consideration when selecting a book to read independently. The goal is to select a book that “clicks”, that “fits”, or in other words, is “just right.” C stands for Connections to Anyone or Anything, L is for Length of Page or Book, I is for Interest in Topic, the second C is for Count Five Unknown Words (based on the well-known “Five-Finger Rule”, which has some common sense appeal but no real evidence base), K is for Knowledge About Topic, Author, Illustrator, and finally, S stands for Sense and Understanding. The CLICKS strategy is a revision of a more complicated, nine-part strategy called BOOKMATCH, which Giordano found was a bit too much for primary-grade children, so she crafted CLICKS and tried it with her second graders. In this article, Giordano walks us through each step, and describes how she teaches one letter of CLICKS per day, modeling and thinking aloud how one might use the strategy denoted by that day’s letter to select a book. She then works in small ability groups to further monitor and scaffold the children’s selection processes. She adds some nice touches, like the reading log children fill out that has a place where they can rate books as Easy, Hard, or CLICKS (Just Right), and the Interest Inventory they can fill out. Both forms are in a condition where they could be scanned or photocopied directly from the article and used in the classroom, though with word processing being what it is now, teachers also could easily create their own forms based on these but tailored to their own students.

I like that the CLICKS strategy looks at text difficulty as something more complex than just the quantitative measures provided by typical readability formulas. I also like the emphasis on several aspects of what the reader brings to her or his transaction with a text, such as prior knowledge, interest, and the ability to make personal connections. As I stated earlier, I like the autonomy that such a strategy can promote for a young reader.

I do also see pitfalls to guard against. In the end, a reader must “try on” a book for size, and even the six aspects of CLICKS might not substitute for simply jumping in and giving a book a try. Sometimes even when a book looks like it might fit, or even seems to fit at first, it ends up just not being for us for some reason. Somehow it just does not engage us. Similarly, books we think we will not like, or which seem at first glance to be “too hard” still somehow engage us, and can even become our touchstone books, as several supposedly too hard “classics” did for me when I was young. I did not understand everything in those touchstone books, but they still grabbed me and held me, and I have revisited them many times as I grew older, always reading something new in them with each visit. I hope that CLICKS is flexible enough not to close off some of those possibilities, and certainly, any reader should also be able to put a book back on the shelf if it simply does not work for him or her, regardless of the reason. My final concern, alluded to earlier, is that while adults can advise and scaffold, the reader’s right to choose her or his own independent reading must be preserved no matter what. Even if an adult believes the choice will not be “just right”, the child still must have the right to try, and to make the determination for himself or herself. If all these potential pitfalls are guarded against, CLICKS could be a helpful heuristic for young readers, both in and out of the classroom.