A guiding question for a prompt may be: How are students taking ownership of their literacy lives?
Notes from the in-person Collaborative on January 23 can be found here: https://goo.gl/HsRovJ
DARLENE MCDOWELL (Math at BSA)
1/7/2017 09:00:26 AMI believe that students are being conditioned to answer standardized test questions and seem to not be familiar with reading a newspaper or magazine for leisure. Gallagher makes the point on page 31 that while teachers argue about petty things such as dress code and tardies, he is thinking how desperately students need interesting books. He makes a valid point here and should make us all reevaluate what our faculty meetings should really focus on.
Another reason for our students to have access to current events and especially what is happening in our community, our county, our state, and our country. Gallagher also talks about the importance of knowledge capital. I also believe in expanding a students' knowledge, no matter what the topic.
This book is giving me great things to think about!
CALLIE HAMMOND (English at BSA)
1/12/2017 01:01:34 PMComment on chapters 2 and 3:
I have done the best I can to overcome the dearth of interesting reading material at my school. I have, in fact, run out of book cases space in my room, and I'm not sure where I'm going to put another one. Unfortunately, it is still desperately difficult to get most of my students interested.
Which leads to the problem addressed in the third chapter. I would love to be able to have my students read without any interruption, or even be able to read to them without interruption. However, the reality is that 90% of my students have no idea what is going on if I don't stop and either explain or ask questions every half page of so or give them questions to fill out as they go. I know it disrupts the flow -- quite frankly, it drives me crazy -- but it seems to be the only way to get them to read the material at all.
MATT MARTIN (ELA at ELMS)
1/18/2017 09:21:58 AM
“What the reader brings to the page is often more important than the ability to read the words on the page,”(p. 33) Gallagher says.
One of my best speeches to kids, ultimately, is about the building of prior knowledge, but it begins with some cognitive theory dressed up to sound like, well, dressing.
“Your brain is a big walk-in closet,” it goes. “All the things you know are hooks. 2+2=4 is a hook. George Washington = first president of the United States is a hook. Your closet has a lot of hooks in it. The way humans learn new stuff is to think of a hook in their closet to hang the new stuff on so that it stays there and you don’t lose it or forget it. 4-2=2 can be hung from the 2+2=4 hook, and Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States can be hung from the George Washington = first president of the U.S. hook. Then the new stuff, in turn, becomes a hook for something else that’s new later on.
“There are valuable prior knowledge “hooks” in every book, movie, television show, textbook, newspaper and magazine article, blog, podcast, song lyric, comedy sketch, play and billboard you come across. To gather these new hooks, and hang them from hooks already in your closet, you must read, listen – and think – so that your closet becomes crowded with hooks. And the more hooks you have to hang new stuff from, the easier it is to learn, and remember, that stuff.”
Since reading chapters 2 and 3 of Readicide, I have doubled down on the amount of class time devoted to Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) in order that the many students who do not read outside of school have ample opportunities to build a solid prior knowledge foundation (43) as well as prepare for improved reading achievement scores (42).
Yesterday, my students and I were reading and discussing a cross-curricular (SS) reading about Napoleon Bonaparte. During the discussion, I related to them that it was archaeologists with Napoleon’s army in Egypt who found and “discovered” the Rosetta Stone. Today one of those students pointed out a reference to that event in the early pages of Rick Riordan’s Red Pyramid.
Gotta love some SSR and the hooks it hangs.
With regard to chapter 3, I’m certain there are plenty of speeches condemning the “tsunami” and “overteaching” of texts (61-65). I’m working on one, a short one, about approaching reading tasks as opportunities for “imaginative rehearsals for the real world” (66). That’s a lot like visualization, right?
MISTI SPECK (ELA at LCHS)
1/23/2017 09:38:50 AMIn chapter 2 of Readicide , I believe the biggest take away was that students need to be given the opportunity to read meaningful text that can be related to what is going on in the world they live in. In order for the text to be meaningful students need to be aware of current events. Allowing students the opportunity to research events and read about them and think about how this may affect them will then make literature more relatable. In order for students to understand and become interested in To Kill a Mockingbird, they must first read about what was going on in the 1930s to 1960s and then evaluate the world they live in to compare and contrast and make the lessons being taught in the novel more relevant.
In chapter 3 of Readicide, I was reminded to not inundate my students with unnecessary assignments about the novel because then they lose interest and want to skim the text so they can do the assignment. The best way I can check for understanding is to have students make personal connections to characters, conflicts, events, and more.