Are we making a difference?

With all the work that goes into literacy are we seeing a return? We have training on new strategies every week, with no time to implement and prefect our new strategies before we have to work with a new one. Student are seeing this over pushes sometimes random approach and are not buying in hope instead to ride this new wave of initiatives until the next comes along.
On the up side my student are at least pretending. When its time for sustaned silent reading my students are mostly silent and have a book in frount of them. Being the book is upside down or they stay on the same page the whole time, I don't think their reading. However, I do see students who get board of pretending and read a few words. The strategies I try are always meet with do we have tos and I don't wantas. A few days later there is that student who wants to know are we gonna do that thing with the hats or writing again.
I don't believe we are going to see any real improvement fast, but we are changing the culture. Just a little bit at a time our students are opening up to the ideas of improved literacy. So over the long run if we can keep this up before switching to something new we shall see results. Remember this kinda change won't happen over night. We have spent a long time as educators digging this hole, it takes just as long to fill.

Is not being literate an acceptable choice?

We have been reading about all different ways to make students read more, because reading more will help them to increase their literacy. But is this true?

In Readicide, Gallagher talks about the importance of letting students choose what they read. What if the child chooses not to read; is that choice acceptable? What if they’d rather do math; isn’t math just as important.

Our country has a literacy rate of 98%. What are they doing with all that literacy? Is literacy more than the ability to read, write and speak. There are literate adults who believe that 9/11 was an inside job because they think steel can’t burn. Any mill worker can tell you steel burns, so does being literate help them. Adults with advanced degrees whom I assume are literate can’t balance their own check book. Yet balancing a check book is something every high school student should be able to do according to the standards. Did being literate help them? My grandmother can’t set the clock on her VCR even though how to do it is in the manual on top of the VCR. Did being literate help her?

Our students our able to see what we see, and they to question why be literate? In the end literacy is a choice. Our students who choose to be literate will embrace it, no matter what happens. Those who choose to be illiterate will, and nothing we can do will change that. Due to this, are we wasting energy and resources on those who are choosing not to be literate.

Students who are free to choose, will be better students.

Why Do We Read?

            At my school, student do sustained silent reading Monday thru Thursday. One of my students asked “Why are you making us read?”

            Why do we read, such a simple question with such a complex answer. Why do you read, and how can we impress upon our students the same desires.

            Reading is done for several reasons; learning, pleasure, and testing. No matter what you do is life you read for one or more of those reasons. We as teacher need to show the value of each reason for reading to our students, all the while avoiding reading because you were told to.

            Reading for pleasure is the simplest and truest form of reading, it’s very much reading for reading sake. It is also the hardest for someone to embrace, just too many obstacles. If you don’t understand what you read, if your board by what you read, if you have something better to do than reading, and others. Solving these will get students reading. Readicide states that often we are reading above our level and so the challenge is too great and we quit. Allow student to read at their level for pleasure. There is nothing wrong with a senior in high school reading Berenstain Bears for pleasure. Even high level reader enjoy an easy read every now and then, besides when comes to reading for pleasure any reading is valuable reading. Next if your board with what you’re reading for pleasure it maybe that you’re reading what someone else through was good. Read whatever you like; you watch whatever TV you like, so read what you like. Finally reading for pleasure is a hobby, if there is something better to do then do it. Golf is a hobby and not everyone like it. However you need to be open to reading, keep trying it someday you may like it.

            Reading for learning is a little harder than for pleasure, but a little easier to embrace. Human nature is to improve upon itself, no one can escape that. Some people may not what to improve the same way you do, but we all want to be better at something. The knowledge of our civilization, and those, before us is written down. All you need is a library and the world is yours. We as teacher have distorted reading by converting student’s reliance on their textbook to their teacher. It should be the goal of every teacher to become obsolete because their student can get all the knowledge they need from their own literary resources. This will need happen by we can dream. Student need to be retrained to look to books, this means if a student can learn it by reading a teacher should let them. Start off slow with simple ideas, but grow to complex concepts. You will see the student’s wiliness to read grow, because they will start placing value upon it.

            Reading for testing, we all have to do it. Our drivers test, school test, request for proposals, whenever you read to help you provide a product or service. It is the other two reasons that help you here. You take all that knowledge you have acquired combine it with experiences and you get paid.

            Reading unlocks everything you want, but only if you let it. That why we what our student to read, we want them to have it all. We just need to show them that value, and then they will run with it.

Dude where's my word?

            Our student’s spoken vocabulary is between 5,000 and 7,000 words, where academically they need about 85,000 to 100,000 words. Quite a disparity. Why such a gap, students aren’t that different from the rest of the population.

            Our culture is filled with dude, dude, dude, oh yeah and dude. There are many means for the same word. This is world where you only need a few thousand words. Those words just have to be good multitaskers.

            Academics are the opposite. We need tens of thousands of words because we search for as many words as possible to describe one idea.

            These two conflicting views of life are the way of our world. It’s no wonder that our students struggle with our academic words, they just aren’t that good of multitaskers. In fact our words are just one of many.

            Is there a happy medium we should be seeking, lets add new words that have multiple meaning but are more descriptive of dude. Our student may just need a few new multitasker words at a time that will lead to a want of even more descriptive terms. This will grow there vocabulary in a natural way, just as a young child trying to better describe the world around them.

Lets Move From Henry Ford Reading to American Chopper Reading

At the turn of last century Henry Ford mastered the art of the moving assembly line. With it came Model T and cars were now available for the masses. The masses were improved because now they were mobile, there was only one option to choose from.
American Chopper has turned the Ford model on it head. Now assembly lines make many parts, and you can put them together anyway you like. This sets up for you to have exactly what you want.
Readicide states that the elephant in the room is the standardization of test, making reading boarding and shallow. We need to have a standardization of classrooms, but we need to move beyond.
It is time to have reading exactly how students need it and like it. Since each student is different, we will need to have a custom made reading plan for each student.
The standards will be needed to make individual plans work, they will just have to be flexible enough to work for each and even student. Student will then fell they have the custom plan just for them.

Introduction

Thank you for taking the time to stop by. I am blogging for an assignment for my Masters of Education class on Reading in the Content Area. My content area is highschool math. As time moves forward I hope to share with you my views on reading in the math content area. Please continue to stop by over the course of the spring semester 2011.