I Read It, But I Don't Get It

In the book “I Read It, But I Don’t Get It” by Cris Tovani, several ideas popped out at me that I want to implement in my classroom. First, I want to put an end to fake-reading in my classroom. Tovani offers many great tools to help with that such as annotating, sticky notes when confused, highlighting, double-entry diaries, etc. Having students engage in these activities makes them slow down and actually focus on what they are reading and what they are confused about.

One of my favorite activities that she mentioned was annotating because it covers such a wide range of things you think about as you read such as background knowledge, questions, summaries, connections, visuals, inferences, etc. Having students start on just focusing on annotating for one of these categories is not overwhelming and helps them read the text closer. Then slowly throughout the semester continue building on concepts students should be thinking about while they are reading. It is important that the teacher does not explicitly teach what everything in the text meant as this presents students with not much reason to annotate or think critically about their reading.

I really liked her sticky-note confusion test. She understood that her students had not understood Canto 34 and instead of testing them anyway or lecturing about what the text was about, she had students think critically about where they got lost and why. Afterwards, the class ultimately learned more about Canto 34 than if Tovani had just stood up and taught it.

Double-entry diaries work very well too. It’s basically like annotating except you’re doing it on another piece of paper. I would use double-entry diaries if students were using a book they couldn’t mark up.

Lastly, I would use the pink and yellow highlighting technique maybe once or twice at the beginning of the semester to get my students to understand how to slow down and really think about what they understand and what is confusing them. I would give them very short texts to work with as this can be a tedious task. Then we could move into annotating as soon as they start being able to identify confusion and understanding.

Readicide

I really enjoyed reading “Readicide.” It was very thought-provoking and it gave me a lot of ideas for my own classroom. One idea of Gallagher’s that I really appreciated was the idea of bringing the library to the students rather than expecting the student’s to go to the library. When you make books readily accessible to students, they are more likely to read those books. I like the idea of having a classroom library and asking students and parents to donate books to that library.

Another point that Gallagher made that I agree with is that students should silent read more and that during silent reading they should be prohibited from reading academically or doing homework. They should be reading a book that they are personally interested in and one that will not be tested on. To keep students accountable, it’s a good idea to have them write a one paragraph reflection on the book they read. But when students are constantly reading academically and reflecting on every page and being tested on every chapter they lose their love of reading quickly because they have no time to experience reading flow. We have to give our students opportunities to immerse themselves in a book and not interrupt them. They have to have a balance of reading academic texts and reading for fun.

Lastly, I liked his idea of keeping students current with the news because there are an overwhelming amount of high school students that have no idea about what is happening in the real world outside of their history, English, math, and science classes. In my classroom, every few days, I want to give my students three short news articles, ask them to read one news article, and bring the news articles to class along with their reflection to discuss with their peers.

Social Justice

For this blog post on the issue of social justice in the classroom, I chose to respond to an article called “Creating Classrooms for Social Justice” by Tabitha Dell’Angelo. The link to her article is below. From what I gathered as I read her post, social justice is “recognizing and acting upon the power that we have for making positive change” and encouraging our students to do so as well. Part of encouraging our students to act upon this power is to also diversify your instruction and activities to reach out to all types of students. There are four steps that are important for teachers to use to help students realize and act upon the power they have for making positive change. First, a teacher should value their students and what knowledge, ideas, opinions, and/or facts students can bring to class. Second, a teacher must connect lessons to the real world at all opportunities. This will teach students how to be critical thinkers and form their own opinions. Third, teachers must create a community in their classroom where every voice can be heard. Since the classroom is diverse, the teacher will want to include materials in each lesson that address these diversities. Lastly, teachers should give authentic assessments that span outside of the classroom. For example, instead of writing letters just for a grade, have students write letters for a grade and then have students revise and send them. Social justice is a key component to the classroom because it really encourages teachers to reach out and make connections with their students. It encourages teachers to help their students make real world and life connections. If students learn social justice in the classroom, they will go on to act upon their power to make a positive impact in this world. 

 http://www.edutopia.org/blog/creating-classrooms-for-social-justice-tabitha-dellangelo