My favorite article so far in the latest EL centers on making students want to read.
“No matter what instructional methods we employ, students must spend substantial time applying the reading skills and strategies we teach before they develop reading proficiency.”
Basic reading instruction ends in the 4th grade and who wants to be 10 or 11 and still reading Junie B Jones (350L; 2.4 AR)? So of course by the time they are in high school most of them can’t read the text book— and if the math and science teachers can’t pick themselves off the floor from laughing at my previous dissertation—we are stuck…
That is why I loved, I mean Loved this article...it hits two of my favorite subjects… reading and relationships!
My nephews think I’m cool —when I taught the oldest in the 6th grade, I turned him on to Harry Potter and then Lord of the Rings. Then last winter—the oldest 2 gave me Twilight and in the summer, Percy Jackson. I in turn am contributing The 39 Clues (they are complete National Treasure freaks) and Super Freakonomics.
Many of the relationships that I still have with students were formed over the basis of books. “What are you reading? ...Well if you like that, you may want to try….” and then they come back and tell me all about it. My children are completely amazed when strange kids come up to me in the Piggly Wiggly to tell me about their latest favorite book...which is astounding since I never actually ‘taught’ any of these children—I just met them on breakfast duty or while administering AIMS benchmarks.
Do you read what your kids are reading? Do you model the behaviors that we expect to see in our students? Do you have conversations with your students about what they are reading with an expectation that they are actually reading something? Do they know you read? Do you keep books on hand for your students to check out? Do you order from Scholastic too, just for your room? Did you know that the classics like Lord of the Rings, Little Women, The Old Man and the Sea are available in the middle school scholastic monthly order thing… CHEAP? Do you think that reading is play?
Another article, Literacy Starts with the Teachers, assures me that more than 1 or 2 strategies will overwhelm the middle and high school teachers…. So here are the two strategies—read something (not related to your subject) and talk about it to your students; and use cooperative discussion to scaffold your students into reading both literary and informational text on grade level in your classroom. Let’s open our eyes to the possibilities.
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