To Kill-a-reader Casserole

I enjoyed reading Gallagher's insights on the chop-chop method that he believes is assisting in readicide. Now with my experience in the public school system only being in a science classroom, I have a difficult time relating this chapter to my current placement. I can however, relate this to my own personal experiences that I had in English classes throughout high school. I clearly remember the teachers constantly stopping and analyzing the book and completing papers along the way. This constant stopping really does ruin the "reading flow" that potentially could occur. I found Gallagher's analogies to stopping a movie twenty times to analyze comical. Almost anyone would loose interest in a movie that was stopped every few minutes, just as readers loose interest stopping every few pages. After reading this chapter and really thinking about how this is something so many teachers are guilty of, as a teacher I will now be more aware of my reading techniques with students. As a teacher, I do not want to fall in the trap of leading my students to hating reading.

Endangered Minds Ch 2

While, reading in schools may be a dying trend, not all school systems are followers. The school system I currently work in provides students 1 hr a week on Friday to read whatever they like. The students are encouraged to read books of interest during this time. Outside of the Friday "read hour" in my placement class, there is not really any reading happening. Instead, I see the teacher just reading a bunch of power point slides to the students. In science class teachers really have the opportunity to bring in outside magazines, articles and books related to the subject. I believe that all the new technology may be attributing to this decline in classroom reading.