I love innovative reading strategies. Most religion teachers recognize early on that despite the fact that they are meant to teach theology, they spend a lot of their time teaching reading. Literature has historically been a key source of our faith and it is critical to the well-rounded Catholic religious education program. In Nick Senger’s ROMAN Reading: 5 Essential Skills for Transforming Your Life through Literature you will find a creative way of promoting the reading of entire books. Reading books in their entirety is becoming quite rare in young people and Nick’s advice makes reading manageable.
Nick lays out an excellent acronym for reading (and all teachers love reading acronyms!): 
R – Read
O – Outline
M – Mark
A – Ask
N – Name
In his book, you will find numerous applications to this reading strategy including some sample texts like “The Bet” by Anton Chekhov and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. He also includes an extensive reading list of his personal favorites.
I’m writing a quick post about this now because I think this book would be a perfect guide for summer reading assignments. Many schools assign the reading of multiple books and Nick’s strategies could really help convince young people to actually do that reading!
Nick is one of the most prolific readers I know on Goodreads and a well known Catholic school teacher. He blogs at www.nicksenger.com and is the creator of Catholic School Chronicle.
ROMAN Reading: 5 Essential Skills for Transforming Your Life through Literature can be found at Lulu.com.
