Ending Readicide

Thinking about the task that lies ahead of us as educators, ending the readicide our nation's political leaders have created through legislation such a No Child Left Behind, is quite daunting. Gallagher's findings and the ideas he shares for combatting the issue are strong points we definitely need to keep in mind as we begin our journey. I found The 50/50 Approach (p. 117) particularly intriguing. Developing recreational readers should be a key practice and focus of all educators, but leisure reading has been relegated to the very back burner in most schools in exchange for more time focusing on test preparation. The story that Stephanie and Ryan shre about the GMC students reading too many leisure books during class time and the distraction that creates is an exciting problem to have, while my 7th graders can hardly stand the one hour of Drop Everything And Read (DEAR) time on Friday mornings during Academic Support. Students see this as a punishment and are constantly askng "why do we have to do this?" And I have to be honest, I know the answer to why this is important, but I have yet to fidn a way to explain its importance to my kids in a way that will make sense to them and get them as excited about the time as I am that they have that opportunity! This time fits in perfectly with most all of the "developing recreational readers" category. What students are reading for fun, enjoyment, to "build valuable knowledge capital" can be achieved through this time set aside for student-selected Silent Sustained Reading. It's not for a grade, but there are also no incentives for this reading time, and I could see that as a way to improve the DEAR time in my classroom.
One concern I have about this reading time is that many students are selecting magazines from the classroom bookshelf to read during this time on a weekly basis. Through this they are fostering that "thinner and broader" education. Instead of engaging in a cognitive challenging novel, they fly through page after page of newsworthy information or ground-breaking new information about our world. However, it is juts that--a lack of depth. This magazine reading during DEAR is a parallel to the "Internet reading producer shallower reading than book reading...there is more emphasis placed on reading headlines and blurbs" (112). In my classroom, I would immediately combat this with a "book flood" available to them. I have actually already begun creating my classroom library! The beginning of the end of readicide is going to have to start in each and every one of our classrooms through the strategies we implement, being reading role models, engaging in conversations with students about their reading, and having high-interest reading available at all reading levels to guide all students to deeper reading.

Overteaching Reading

Ok... I have to start by asking a few questions.
1. How many of you have ever heard the phrase "overteaching reading"?
2. How many of you have ever experienced the overteaching of reading?

I have to admit that I've never heard the term or explanation of "overteaching reading," but I have certainly experienced it many times over the years. As both a student in classes and as a student teacher I have seen this "overteaching" happen. I have had the same thought that Mem Fox's daughter Chloe uttered many times over the years---"I could have read four books by now!" (p. 59) Reading in class or for a class sometimes became ruined by teachers repeatedly stopping to recap, analyze, define words, etc. or assignments over the reading that require continuous question answering, passage marking, reflecting, etc.
In addition to the irony of this overteaching of reading, I find it ironic that Gallagher's somewhat humorous example of movie-watching (p. 61) has actually happened to me. I was in a college class watching a film incorporating many of the sociological concepts we had been learning in class and my professor did, in fact, stop the film multiple times for us to discuss these sociological themes and the director's tone and perspective.
The part of Gallagher's chapter 3 "Avoiding the Tsunami" that I was most intrigued by was the section describing how the overteaching of reading contributes to the destruction or lack of development of the reading flow. Since I am such an avid reader, I love the experience of being so engrossed in a book that I reach the end and have to reorient myself to where I am, what time it is, etc. That is a true testament to a great author and also to my ability to completely shut off and truly experience the story. Many teachers all killing students' abilities to find this passion for and enjoyment of reading by the incessant stop to analyze and/or reflect.
"The endless reading hoops placed in front of young readers to jump through are actually exacerbating the problem" (p. 61) made me consider disciplinary literacy once again. We are social studies content teachers need to keep this is mind for our reading asssignments. Primary documents are a great resource in social studies classrooms, and implementing the strategies we learned from the article in class earlier this semester can help us alleviate some of these hoops. Summarizing some wordy parts of primary documents and using lower-level vocabulary are two great options.

What is readicide?

Kelly Gallagher's Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It defines readicide as "the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools" (vii). Reading the foreward, introduction, and The Elephant in the Room (chaper 1) were very difficult for me. I wholeheartedly agree with Gallagher's main ideas about how the tyranny of testing is creating a generation of students who can't and/or don't read. Many students are perpetually struggling with reading and all the emphasis is placed on remediation so they can pass a reading component on a standardized assessment as opposed to developing a love for reading through building real-life reading skills. The concept of aliterates (vii) that he introduces was a new term for me, but, sadly, it is a true definition of the majority of our nation's population.
I think one reason why these terms and definitions were so hard for me to fathom and upsetting to read because I am an avid reader and love nothing more than to spend an afternoon curled up with a great book. Bringing standardized testing into the equation created a whole new stir in me. Highlighting the detrimental effects of standardized testing on todays' students is a passion of mine. My undergraduate senior capstone was on this topic and I am continuing to persue this in my action research this semester. Gallagher's Paige Paradox was especially intriguing and I would urge all educators to read this work. Those who are proponents of the current method of mass standardized testing should be made aware of the issues testing brings up and those of us who believe the amount and pressure of these tests are causing more damage than good will have more information to back up and defende thier beliefs.
Many parts of this chapter were helpful and led to a deeper understanding of how readicide is occuring in our schools each and every day. One that stood out to me immediately was that "authentic interest is generated when students are given the opportunity to delve deeply into an interesting idea...by sacrificing deep, rich teaching, we begin chipping away at our students' motivation" (10). From our Annenberg study last semester on motivation, we learned that student interest is of paramount importance. This is especially true for reading. Having students really dig into a text that they are interested in will always generate deeper understanding, retention, and excitement for the subject. This is not occuring in many of today's classrooms, however, because of the emphasis on the standardized assessments that are checking for memorized facts and test-taking skills as opposed to critical thinking and other skills that developing citizens should be acquiring at school.

Teaching Literacy

So... I really enjoyed the literacy engagement simulation activities. After our class on Wednesday, I dug into our Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning textbook a bit more. Section 2 contains some really cool ideas I plan to incorporate into my teahing, and the appendix of reproducibles is equally useful.
The Brainstorming Prior Knowledge strategies (pp. 55-58) are especially important for us as content teachers. These help prepare students for new material and help us as teachers to see what background knowledge our students are bringing into a lesson or unit. These strategies can be set up for most any class or classroom environment- students working individually, in groups, or as an entire group. Many of the strategies for vocabulary development also caught my attention. Using graphic organizers or thinking maps to help build vocabulary knowledge seems particularly useful. Providing class notes in graphic organizer form (like the Power Notes Concept Map on page 126 and the Structured Note-Taking methods from pages 170 to 174) would also be an effective and more engaging form of direct instruction than a straight lecture with outline notes for them to copy from the board. Think/Pair/Share is a strategy I saw in practice on Thursday in class. I think it works well for the students, but can be a little repetitive. For this type of activity, I think it would be important to vary what students are thinking and/or discussing as they move from individual thinking to paried discussion to the class debriefing.
Following these strategies in class, using informal Quick Writes is essential. These are "opportunities for further deliberation, to double-check our understandings, and to clarify our thinking. This essential component of understanding--synthesizing--involves processing a message so that it has personal meaning" (Buehl, 141). From our MAT classes, we have learned that applying personal meaning or connections to academic content will allow for more retention and transfer, which is the ultimate goal of education.

Early Essential Questions

First and foremost, it is important for all of us as content specialists to realize that we DO have an important role to play in teaching literacy. Content literacy, or disciplinary literacy as our first learning module explained it, is where we get to show our students the exciting and unique materials of our subject. Since my two focus areas are geography and political science, teaching my students to how read, understand, and connect with maps, data charts, primary documents, current event news articles, etc. is extremely important. Students are technically "taught" how to read during the primary years, but reading to learn is an entirley different ball game. This requires our content specific knowledge to help teach students how to read different types selections and gather important information or comprehend certain views, main ideas, biases, detailed facts, etc. Teaching students how to "read like a historian" or other specialist allows them to learning the content authentically, and we know that authentic learning means better retention which leads to better understanding and higher achievement.


Some readers may sturggle with content specific reading. Going from reading a Shakespeare play in 1st period to a set of complex science lab instructions in 2nd period to a historical primary document in social studies in 3rd period, and so on can make already struggling readers feel even more discouraged about their reading abilities and foster negative views and reactions to reading in general. As social studies teachers, we can help make our readings more relative, applicable, and easy to understand by using some of the strategies from our in-class discussions and readings, the BLSS text, and Buehl's work. A key way we can do this is by getting away from the textbook! Other ways to help students who are struggling with history or political science texts include giving shorter passages for students to read, having activities for students to do with reading selections, and frontloading (giving students background information and vocabulary prep so they can comprehend the selection more easily).

These same strategies to help struggling readers also help engage students in the content. I see the multiple intelligences coming into play here. Many of the strategies that Dr. Webb and our course text authors have introduced include using visual information to accompany passages, having students do something active with information gathered from the reading, having interpersonal and intrapersonal reading opportunities, etc. An important thing for teachers to always remember about engaging students in the concepts and ideas of the subject area is having a variety of materials for students to read and engage with in regards to any particular subject. Having different reading levels, types of selections, lengths, etc. available for students to experience is the key.

The beginning of literacy class

As an avid reader, I am quite excited about learning how to implement different literacy teaching strategies in my future classroom. Reading has always excited me, and I am hoping to be able to share/pass this along to some of my future social studies students.
Our class discussion of how important technology is for reaching our students was really eye-opening. Seeing the statistics of how many hours they spend reading versus watching tv and playing video games was especially troubling. It is crazy to think that I am not much older than these students, yet I cannot identify with these statistics at all. I still find joy in perusing the library for great books to read and curling up in bed for an afternoon for an adventure in some foreign land through a good book. My facebook addiction is one aspect of technology that I do have in common with these students, however I end up spending most of my time on facebook playing Wheel of Fortune. Literacy skills (reading, writing, spelling, inferring, etc.) certainly are present everywhere these days, and that's why I believe literacy is so important to implement in each and every classroom.
A second part of our class discussion on Wednesday that interested me was how important middle and high school teachers are in teaching literacy. Learning how to read and write does not stop in the third grade as many seem to assume. It is important for students to learn how to read and write for specific content understanding and for students to transition into "reading for learning."
I see disciplinary literacy and "reading for learning" as quite interconnected and I can't wait to learn more about how to teach these concepts in my classroom.