The Crime of Readicide

This is my last post, covering chapters 4 and 5 of Kelly Gallagher's Readicide . In chapter 4, he talks about how to find a "sweet spot" of giving students enough instruction on academic reading. Throughout the book, he emphasizes how overteaching reading--breaking a book into a million small pieces to be analyzed--kills students' love of reading, and can ruin classics. He says to find a balance between smaller chunks and larger chunks where students aren't interrupted. Any student will get frustrated if you hand them an academic text with no guidance, and any student will get frustrated if you guide them too much. So, what to do? He devotes a lot of time discussing the importance of framing. This includes activities like reviewing difficult and archaic vocabulary, discussing the background of the novel, and giving students a preview of the final exam question. I like how his exam questions often compare situations to the book to real-life, current issues. F...

What can be done to prevent the forest fire of "Readicide"? Gallagher focuses on a solution in chapter three of his book Readicide , a solution he touches on in chapter two when he talks about his "Article of the Week" idea. In order for students to learn to love reading they have to--get this--read. I mentioned in my last post about giving students time to read in class, and Kelly talks about this in chapter three. He suggests allotting 50 percent of class time for academic reading, and 50 for recreational reading. He even provides a handy list of books for students to choose from with titles like The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak and Looking for Alaska  by John Green, just to name a couple. While reading this chapter, I was wondering how one would hold students accountable for recreational reading. Even when given uninterrupted lengths of time during class to read, students could still waste time messing around or not really concentrating on the book. Kelly prov...

I think a lot of educators agree that the "No Child Left Behind" Act has not really improved schools. The constant barrage of testing not only leaves less time for actual learning, but it's boring. In school, I am not even sure how many standardized tests I took, but it was a lot. I can't say I learned anything from them or ever felt truly challenged. In Readicide , Kelly Gallagher discusses how we test too much in schools (yup), and how teaching to test destroys students' love of reading. I have read the first two chapters, the first of which covers the many downsides of testing. He provides evidence that teaching to test is actually doing a disservice to our kids. Breaking books down into smaller chunks to be analyzed to death, he says, makes students dread reading. From my own experience, I remember not enjoying English class very much when we practiced for testing. I ended up majoring in English, and I love reading, but I don't think standardized tests h...