Ending of Readicide

The end of Readicide is actually helpful to me in my placement right now.  I am in general Ed 10th World Lit.  The students are asked to read a good bit on thier own or in small groups.  I am not familiar with most of the readings because they are in a book that I wasnt taught from.  I read the stories before I get there to prepare and so that I am able to help them.  To me, these stories are quite easy to read and follow, I have to remind myself that not only am I a grad student, but that I also like Literature.  The students are struggling-STRUGGLING to read these simple stories.  They arent laced with facts, figures, and small details that are barely noticable, they are good, interesting short stories.  My host teacher gives them guided reading questions to have as they read and I hate them.  The students dont read the whole story(which is only 4 pages long).  They look at the question and they skim the material until they see the keyword and then they read that part.  They are missing the entire plot, setting, point of the story.  They answer the questions, they assume they know what they just read, but if they were asked to recap the story, they certainly could not.  In the chapter of Readicide, I liked when he pointed to the fact that you can ask the students to demonstrate thier thinking through written and oral responses (like a brief recap with a requirement of two specific facts mentioned, maybe) instead of filling in bubbles.  I know that "comprehension" has never been explained to these students.  Why am I reading this?  You arent reading it because it is the greatest story known to man, you are reading this to learn meaning associated with words.  What was just said? What does he mean by that?   Not: "What color was Sophie's childhood puppy?" 

Readicide 99-109

I liked Gallagher's suggestions on pg 100 about teachers showing that they too get confused, and also "thinking outloud" so that the students can see his thought process.  I think that you can relate to students on a more human level when they see that you have to think about texts just like they do.  My criticism of his "large chunk reading" is time.  I wonder if with all the mandated material we are suppose to teach: Would I even have time to try all this with one piece of literature?  When talking about close reading, Gallagher says that you should always read with a pencil in hand and that is something that I learned along time ago!  It is absolutely necessary to annotate, make notes, underline (when possible) as you read or points that you think are important enough to remember may get lost in the text.  I like adding post it notes to the book so that you are not writing on the book and also so that you can remove them when preparing to write and place them all over your desk as if you had "brainstormed" them. 
The last point I want to discuss is the way he talks about a lesson he would do in his class.  (pg 108) To walk around the class and see where his students had highlighted and then if he had a common question he could address it as a class, seems like an easy, active, and engaging way to talk about a text.  I wouldn't mind trying it with my class. 

Repost of Chapter 3

I thought I posted this almost 2 weeks ago but I guess I did something wrong so let's try again!

I would like to question something that Mr. Gallagher says on page 75.  He poses the question of : "Isn't it our overall, long-term goal to produce graduates who become life-long readers?  Isn't it paramount that students leave our schools seeing themselves as readers?"  I am answering the question with a question.  Is it?
Is that our paramount goal?  I am not convinced.  I, especially as an English major, see the huge merit in being a reader and in promoting reading for my students, but I am not sure that it is my ultimate goal.  I do not believe that it is the ultimate "paramount" goal of any teacher whatever thier content is.  Being able to read is of course a necessity, but being a "pleasure reader" doesn't mean you are any more likely to succeed as someone who never reads for pleasure.  I am sure there are statistics somewhere that could try to prove me wrong, but I am living proof that it is not a necessity.  There are others in the class who would agree.  I LOVE to read for pleasure, but I haven't had the time to do so in many years.  I am quasi successful, I am in a master's program. 
From my perspective, my ultimate goal is to prepare my students for what they are going to need in life.  If they need to know how to write a paper for the graduation writing test, that is my goal.  If they need to know how to form a sentence for the CRCT, that is my goal.  If they are going to college and need a broad vocabulary for the SAT, that is my goal.  Reading can assist in all those things, but you can read a novel and it can be written in any vernacular known (and unknown) to man.  My students need to know how to write essays that will get them through to the next grade or to graduate.  There are huge benefits to leisure reading and there is a place for it in my classroom, but I cannot agree that it is my ultimate goal. 

Blog 2

Understanding what content literacy actually is has been a big topic for us in class.  Of course we probably all understand what is meant when you talk about content literacy for subjects like Math and Science, however, coming from English content I wasnt sure how I could benefit.  After all, if you can read, you have English content literacy, right?  Well I understand it better now, it isnt necessarily just content literacy as it is subject matter literacy.  The example of the political cartoon on page 33 was the perfect illistration of this.  If you dont have the background knowledge, you don't have the tools to really understand the cartoon. 
More interesting to me were the statistics on 35-37.  The fact that students who read more, in and out of class, scored higher on standardized reading tests and had higher scores on writing tests.  It isn't surprising to me at all, but it is interesting because in my son's school and the schools that I have been in practicum at, the students are highly incouraged and rewarded for reading for fun.  This is uplifting because it seems like our local schools are listening to research and are applying it multiple ways.  I cannot speak to what goes on in other subjects, but as for Language Arts, the time spent on reading is great. 

Readicide Chapter 1

As I am reading this chapter I keep asking myself, "And....we have known this but what can we do about it"?  Gallagher briefly addresses this at the end of the chapter, but then states that this will be talked about throughout the following chapters.  I hope that the rest of this book is more of an offering of what ways he would change the content expected for students to be responsible for rather than just focus on what others have done wrong to create this problem.  There is always someone to blame for just about everything-even natural disasters that are an act of God somehow get blamed on the government, scientists, humanity, human error, etc.  I don't think that anyone is sitting in an ivory tower somewhere dreaming up ways to make it's youth less educated than other countries' youth.  I believe that people do the best that they know how and trying something new is better than playing the blame game.  If memorizing facts isn't the way to become educated and standardized tests need to be thrown away, then what is a better way to assess the masses?  He states that it is not standards that are the problem, it is the amount of standards expected to know, then what part of English grammar would he have English teachers leave out?  Or what elements would he have taken off the periodical table?  Or what war would he have high school students not learn about?  I am not saying that I agree or disagree with him, I am just saying that if you have such a huge issue with something offer up suggestions to a new curriculum and a new way to evaluate and gauge progress/learning.  MW