How to become a Reader

My first question would go to Linda Rief. I would like to preface by saying I know exactly where she is coming from when she talked about her history as a reader. I, too, have a hard time finding time for leisure reading when there is so much more "important reading" to be done. I also truly love her take on book talks and is something I hope I can do in my classroom some day. But on to the question...

Linda Rief talks about allowing the students to read books of their own choice. This concept makes a lot of sense to me. Reading can become boring and a bit of a drag if I am constantly forced to read books that I don't enjoy, books that are too difficult, or books that I feel will never affect my life. I do believe that while it is important to know the Canon, there is much more out there to explore. You can't learn new ideas and concepts if you stick to the same old books all of the time; flexible readers lead to flexible minds. However, what do you do when you school tells you what books to teach in class? What do you do when you have an inflexible curriculum that doesn't allow you to let the students read on their own? I suppose I can assume that she is talking about independent reading but how does that help me get the students interesting in what we are reading in class, as opposed to only interested in only their independent reading? What if the students has as difficult time with reading (like Beers's students)? How will I get them to do independent reading that they can enjoy when they struggle with reading to start out with?

Since we are already talking about students who struggle with reading, I will move on to my next question (which is directed at Beers). When you have a student who struggles as much as George or Mike, how would you devote your time so that you can help them improve as readers but also focus on the rest of your class as well. Someone like Mike, who is not in anyway disabled but is missing what seems like fundamentals for reading, requires more attention that the rest of the students. It seems as though in order for him to catch up with the rest of the class, he needs someone to help him revisit the basics of reading in order to move on from decoding to retention and understanding. I would assume that Beers would meet with Mike's parents to address the problem and give them ways to help in at home. However, what if Mike's parents aren't that investing in Mike's ability to read or what if his parents simply don't have the resources? It is not that I think it is impossible, I just wonder how one would go about dividing the attention equally amongst students while not drawing attention to the fact that the students are at different reading levels?

My next question is also to Beers. With students like Sharamee, who don't have a problem decoding or reading out loud but still struggle as a good reader, how do you help them improve? Sharamee said that she couldn't hear the voice reading inside her head, but how do you make a student listen to the voice inside their head? Sharamee was facing retention and made it very obvious that she wanted to avoid independent reading. However, what if she didn't? What if she did the bare minimum to pass and she pretending like she did her independent reading? How would you identify a student in that case? I feel as though a student who can decode but still has a hard time with retention and understanding and tries the best to stay under the radar needs just as much help as students like Sharamee. 

Hook Lesson Reflection

Yikes! Seeing myself on video is even more terrifying than it sounds (and it already sounded pretty terrifying!). However, I wanna talk about what I got from the video. I would like to start off with what I would not change about my lesson.

First off, I would like to keep folding the sheet of paper with the poem into quarters. My main objective with the lesson was to teach literary devices and I wanted the students to find examples from the poem to express each literary device. I think that writing on the back of the poem forces the student to concentrate harder on the line than writing on a separate sheet of paper would. I would leave in the background information about the author of the poem because background information never hurts when trying to decipher poetry.  I would also still pass out the oranges (because who doesn't like oranges?).

Now for the things I would change about the lesson. The first thing I would change is reading the poem out loud. Since I wrote the lesson for ninth graders, I believe that they are more than capable to read the poem themselves. I would add in a review of what the literary devices are. Since I've taken out the reading out loud, I think I would replace it with using the oranges to help the students remember what each literary device is. For example, one of the categories was metaphor. I would ask the student to make up a metaphor using an orange.

I think there are some things I could do to improve the lesson. I think I could have spoken a little louder. I had a hard time hearing myself at points. If I had a class room full of fourteen-year-olds, I doubt that they would stay as quiet as my graduate classmates. I could have also made the purpose of the lesson more clear of the students so they know what to expect and what to look for in the poem.

Overall, this was my first ever lesson and there is definitely room for improvement!