My course is literally about teaching reading to young children, a challenge given that research suggests that college students complete only 20–30 percent of assigned readings, a behavior inversely related to academic performance and engagement (Kerr & Frese, 2017; Deale & Lee, 2021). Further exacerbating the issue is the shift toward shorter, digital forms of information consumption, which hardly prepare students for the rigorous demands of academic reading (Twenge, 2018). How do you teach students how to teach reading when they do not read themselves? Out of a need to engage my undergraduate preservice teachers in the core reading for their literacy methods course, Literacy Block, I developed video text introductions to bridge the gap between student capabilities and course expectations.
