Lessons from Readicide

Well...reading this small little book really opened my eyes to the reality of where the love for reading is going. As educators, we have to show our students how wonderful books really are. Of course there will always be few that won't find the love, but we should still try.

In regards to the awesome GPS (haha) the standards have been lowered when it comes to reading and writing and if you disagree, go spend a day in 12th grade. I do not believe this entire country is failing when it comes to standards, but Ga sure is.

Ch 4 pg 99-109

The "small chunk-big chunk" idea struck an interest to me. In the science classroom I often see the students becoming very overwhelmed with the text reading. After reading this chapter in Readicide I realize that it is quite possible the students do not know how to read "chunks" of text for info. As a teacher, I see that I need to start with small chunks before assigning my students large text amounts. Doing this will increase their likelihood of comprehending what they have read.

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.

Readicide Ch 1

This is my 2nd year being in a Science classroom and so I expected to hear CRCT discussed from day one, but it didn't happen and has yet to happen. My lead teacher is a rare form, one who believes in students learning through inquiry and not just through transmission. It is true that teachers are required to teach an insane number of standards, in fact so many that students are only skimming through the content. What kind of deep thinking or interest does this evoke? Gallagher wrote that students only have "authentic interest" when they are able to really explore an interesting idea. When standards are covered so quickly just to stay on the state's set deadline students are not able to explore any topic at depth. Students will be exposed to differnt literacy forms when able to study more things of interest. In the classroom I'm currently in, the lead teacher really strives for students to have the opportunity to explore their interests. In Science, students can be exposed to reading in many forms, such as lab write-ups and interactive Web Quest. As far as CRCT prep, teachers are forced to teach the content for the test if they expect a contract for the following year. I believe Judith A Langer said it best by this quote, "If students are taught to read and write well, they will do fine on a mandated reading test." We should not focus teaching students test questions, but rather on content areas.