Teaching Reading and Promoting Literacy

Read-i-cide: n: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools.

For this week, our prompt or idea is teaching reading and promoting literacy.  These ideas are great to think about and it is a simple blog to write about.  These ideas can also take you in many different directions too.  So, to help me out, I am going to be looking at the book Readicide by Kelly Gallagher.  This book is a great read for anyone going into or already is a teacher of English at any level or any subject for that matter.

Teaching reading in schools can be hard.  We have the kids who do not want to read for a slew of reasons (They forgot to read, they did not want to read, they did not understand it, they cannot read, etc.).  This hinders the learning experience in the classroom.  For most teachers, we like to teach all over Bloom’s Taxonomy; focusing not only on the knowledge and comprehension at the lower end but also synthesis and evaluation as well.  If the teacher is focusing on trying to get the students to show knowledge and comprehension of the book, it is almost impossible for them to get the whole way up to synthesis and evaluation.  Kelly Gallagher comments in his introduction about Readicide and how there are four main contributing factors:

·         Schools value the development of test-takers more than they value the development of readers

·         Schools are limiting authentic reading experiences

·         Teachers are over teaching book

·         Teachers are under teaching book



One interesting thing I see in this list, that goes against my thoughts above, is the idea of that it falls mainly on the school and the teacher.  I agree that some or most of the responsibility falls on the school and teacher.  We are there to promote the reading and learning about literature, but at the same time, we cannot teach to the students if they shut down on us.  This connection was brought up the other night in my Assessing Students with a Learning Disability class.  We said that teachers have been taught different methods of getting students to read ie: round robin, popcorn reading, etc. and this can hinder a student’s learning.  For example, if Jimmy who sits in the front row of my classroom is not a strong oral reader, but can comprehend and understand everything he reads silently to himself and I as the teacher call on him to read out loud, what is that going to do to him?  He is going to refuse or not do it or he does do it and he has a lot of trouble which causes the other kids to make fun of him.  All of these items hinder a child in their learning environment and we want to have an LRE (least restrictive environment) classroom.  This is going to cause Jimmy to shut down, not participate in class and the worst of all STOP reading all together.  If he knows he is going to be made fun of if he tries, then why would he even try?

Like I have been talking about, this blog is off of the book Readicide and I could sit here all day and talk about ever little aspect of it.  We focused on chapters one and two for this first post.  I think it would be best to post my questions in response to the first two chapters now instead of making so many other points about the book.



High stakes testing like a carrot on a stick

At one point in the first chapter, Kelly Gallagher talks about the Texas Miracle.  This was the “remarkable progress Texas schools made when educational ‘carrots and sticks’ were attached to high-stakes, multiple-choice reading exams” (Gallagher 19).  Well, here is where my question comes in.  It goes on to talk about how “school officials did not count many students who gave up and dropped out” and “at the height of the Texas Miracle, special education students were not counted in the test scores” (Gallagher 19).  Well, if these students were not held to the same standards as students today (EVERY child must be accounted for) how and why did the policy change?  They are basing their information off of something that should NOT be compared to students today.  That is not right and then the government wonders why student testing is not the same.  Any thoughts on this would be great!

Like building a skyscraper on quick sand

My next question has to deal with the idea of our schooling practices in general.  I have two quotes from chapter one that go along with this idea.  First, “…as their (the student’s) state scores were rising to impressive heights, ‘only about one third of Alsine’s graduates entering public colleges scored high enough on college readiness tests to avoid remedial classes’” (Gallagher 20).  This is simply stating that the students were scoring really high on these high-stakes tests, but were not doing well on the things that actually matter (college placement testing).  How horrible is that?  The second quote to go along with this is “Building a national education agenda on the Texas model was like building a skyscraper on quick sand” (Gallagher 21).  So, here is my question to this.  If we have all of this information about our way of schooling and we know high-stakes testing is a bad idea for the well-being of our students, WHY DO WE CONTINUE TO DO IT?  That is so wrong!

Those two questions are the two most important questions I found in the first two chapters.  Of course, I came up with many good ideas for my own classroom, but do not want to give them away until I have had the chance to work them out and refine them first.  I hope the questions I pose are not to strong or do not make sense.  I think Mr. Gallagher has written an outstanding book and again, if you have not had the chance to read it.  PLEASE do!  You will learn so much and it will open your eyes to something totally different in the world of education.

 

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy culture.  Just get people to stop reading them.”

                                                                                                            --- Ray Bradbury