"But it's the chosen reading that turns kids into livelong readers."
The librarian said this, and I'd certainly heard it before. And I agree with it. But I've never known of a great way to integrate it into my classroom. The 9th grade curriculum - Fences, A Lesson Before Dying, In the Time of Butterflies, Persepolis, Romeo and Juliet - is pretty full. We're now only on A Lesson Before Dying, which basically is written at a 6th grade level or so, at least in terms of language. I don't have any issue with teaching it to my 9th grade classes. First of all, many of the students are struggling or reluctant readers, and the level works well. Secondly, the novel, despite its simplicity of language, is also very distinctively written (lots of parallelism) and quite complex in subject matter. At its simplest, it's about a man trying to teach another man to die with dignity, but there is so much else there - questions about what the worth of a human life is, issues of expectation and race and "wearing the mask", etc. It's a great teach, certainly one of my favorites both in my teaching and non-teaching life.
But so many of the kids aren't even reading it. We ended up through Chapter 10 before the holiday and the snow days, and most of the kids did not pick up the book between Dec. 19 and Jan. 4. Then, they returned to school - I gave them an extra day to get caught up with the reading the put off the reading check quiz until Jan. 5 - and just mailed it in for the quiz. Several turned in blank quizzes.
With this in mind, how can I integrate independent reading into my classroom? When? Some of the students are reading at a high level and are bored by the slow pace with which I'm reading ALBD. Others can't - or won't - keep up. And I'm so overwhelmed by everything this year (the planning is really intense; I feel like I work at school until 5 or 6 and then come home and work until 10 - nearly every night), that the thought of adding another dimension just seems impossible. I can barely get to vocabulary.
Should Journalists Start Learning From Gangsters?
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As we discover more details about the DOJ’s investigation of Fox News
journalist James Rosen, former FBI agent David Gomez compiles a list of
best practice...
17 minutes ago
2 comments:
I'm not sure how long your periods are, but I have done it two ways. When I taught 48 minute periods in high school, Wednesday was reading day. After their journal, I did a book talk on a book I thought they would enjoy (wow, I read a lot of young adult books that year!), and we read the rest of the period. This was also before state testing and AYP were so demanding.
Now that I teach middle school blocks every other day for eighty minutes, I start each day with silent reading. They read for fifteen minutes in their independent reading book and then do a short, general response question. They also have time during their advisor class to do SSR.
I teach middle (8th last year and 6th this year), and I've done daily independent reading time for 20 minutes in the past with some success. Now I do Tuesdays and Thursdays 30 minutes of independent reading time followed by journaling. They get scored for reading time--100 points to start, and every time they speak or I see them not reading they lose points. Seems to work pretty well. The key is to have a LOT of magazines and books. We have 90 minute periods, however, which makes it pretty easy to plan for time.
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