Reading in the Classroom-
Today's class was eye opening for me. When we were handed the article to read silently I was immediately irritated. Really?! He wants us to sit here and read!?
My immediate thoughts - I have four readings for another class to do, I am starving, why does everybody keep flipping their papers so loudly, why is that kid clicking their pen, why do we have to do this?!
The thought questions continued until I read the title four times and decided to get started. By this point people were flipping again and I was trying to get started.
My next few thoughts - Can I go sit in the hall? I would be able to read this a lot quicker in the hall. I can not concentrate and critically read this sitting here... I am hungry! Okay, page one, here we go.
I finally got started and sunk into a groove of reading. I was able to tune out most of the background noise and skim the article. Was I able to critically read and annotate? No way. At this point I just wanted to have an idea of what the article was about in case I got called on.
With a few minutes left in class, the teacher stopped us and explained to us the point of this exercise was to show how hard it is to read in class. What do we ask middle and high school students to do daily?! Read in class! It was like one of those cartoons where a lightbulb goes off in my head. Why do we do this?! Clearly this is not the best way to get students to learn. Then I started thinking, we aren's supposed to round robin read, we aren't supposed to call on people to read a lot, and today we learned its not very efficient to read silently in class. Sooo.... how do we get students to read the text? Are we supposed to assign it for homework? Odds are that wont happen. Maybe take them to the library and let them spread out and get comfy and read? I am at a loss on this topic...
Interesting! I found the reading to be much easier to engage with because we were able to do it in class. I wasn't distracted by my other readings sitting on my table, my computer, my phone or anything like that. It's really intriguing how differently we reacted to this request to read in class, and maybe that helps to explain the questions you pose at the end of your blog somewhat. Maybe each one of us would react best to a particular reading practice which is why it makes it so difficult to find one that will work efficiently in the classroom. Thanks for sharing your reactions, definitely makes me think!
ReplyDeleteI think it's also an interesting thing (and one to take careful note of) that you and Mr. Smith (see his above comment) had such different reactions to the assignment -- it goes to show that different students can sometimes greatly prefer to complete tasks in different ways. The quiet focus of the in-classroom reading for one student can be an unfocused experience for another. I think also that this gives you excellent perspective on how to create reading assignments for your students that will allow them to complete them in the most comfortable way possible. What do you think would have helped you read better while in class, or while out of class? Maybe an audio presentation? Maybe allowing students to listen to music quietly on their headphones while they read? There's a good chance that the same things will make things easier for some of your students.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting to see the different reactions. I think it's important to look closely at the practice of reading silently in class. Matt makes an good point about offering different options for accessing the content. Still, there's some pretty convincing research about the value of silent sustained reading. Also, when kids say they concentrate more on the reading when they listen to music, unless the music is instrumental, they're wrong.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this dialogue.