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.