What You Can Do to Prevent Forest Fir--Readicide
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 provides a solution called a "one pager", a one page worksheet in which students answer a reading question and identify the target audience and purpose of the text. He talks about how it's difficult to find a balance between accountability and giving students enough freedom to develop their own love of reading. I like this suggestion for it's simplicity. It is structured well enough that students have to write something meaningful, but short enough that it won't make them dread it. My idea before reading Kelly's suggestion was to have students write some kind of reflection or do a creative project, but I think I will incorporate his "one pager" into my own plans to keep any assignments I come up with brief and organized.
Something else I like about Kelly's approach is that he builds his own classroom library. He has students and parents donate books, he buys used books from Amazon, orders from Scholastic, etc. Even teachers with the best school libraries might benefit from creating their own classroom library for students to peruse. I will provide a link here to Kelly's website and the lists of books he recommends (listed at the bottom of the page).
Thank you for your time. I'll post about the last two chapters next week!
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 provides a solution called a "one pager", a one page worksheet in which students answer a reading question and identify the target audience and purpose of the text. He talks about how it's difficult to find a balance between accountability and giving students enough freedom to develop their own love of reading. I like this suggestion for it's simplicity. It is structured well enough that students have to write something meaningful, but short enough that it won't make them dread it. My idea before reading Kelly's suggestion was to have students write some kind of reflection or do a creative project, but I think I will incorporate his "one pager" into my own plans to keep any assignments I come up with brief and organized.
Something else I like about Kelly's approach is that he builds his own classroom library. He has students and parents donate books, he buys used books from Amazon, orders from Scholastic, etc. Even teachers with the best school libraries might benefit from creating their own classroom library for students to peruse. I will provide a link here to Kelly's website and the lists of books he recommends (listed at the bottom of the page).
Thank you for your time. I'll post about the last two chapters next week!
Balancing academic and recreational reading is a really nice idea, especially if we want our kids to be life-long readers. Does he have any thoughts about sharing orally with the class what the student got out of the text that day? I guess it depends on how big the class is and how much time that might take up. The one pager is good because some students aren't as comfortable sharing aloud, but still have good contributions.
ReplyDeleteThe building up a classroom library is right up my alley. (I'm actually not allowing myself to buy anymore books because our shelves at home are full.) I want to scour the annual library sale when I get my own classroom. There used to be a pretty cool Scholastic bookstore on Jefferson, but I don't know if it's there anymore.
He hasn't said anything so far about students sharing orally, but I like that idea. I think I might try to incorporate it somehow. Maybe having students share in small groups or with partners, in case they are shy? They could just talk about what they read that day and their thoughts, and I would guide them with a reading question.
DeleteI think the one pager idea is a great idea! One of my concern is that students might expect feedback so it is also more grading (or correcting) for us. It is great to find something that allows students to have some freedom while making sure they do the work, might be tough on the teacher as it is also more work.
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of a library such as the one you mentioned is great! Books are so expensive, that might foster interest in students and encourage them to read more.
Thank you for sharing!
Encouraging the students to have academic reading and recreational reading is a great because I think it also helps build the relationship between teacher and students in that it shows the teacher is willing to allow them some freedom and chances to explore their own ideas and interests. Creating a safe atmosphere where students feel comfortable is hard to do, but I think exercises like this might be a way to accomplish that and would then help facilitate a trusting environment in the classroom that might make it easier for students to feel like they can share their ideas.
ReplyDeleteAgain though, I would be concerned about how much is being allotted to this activity - is it every class period or just an occasional activity?