You can't make me read that!!!

One of the problems with the lack of motivation is that students are forced to view what is important because we, teachers, tell them that it is important. I remember when I was in high school and we were forced to read Shakespeare and hating. It was not until I went to college and learned about the canon or should I say the Western canon of literature. Wikipedia states that the pieces of canon have been the most important and influential in shaping the Western culture. Or, as I was taught that the canon are novels that are timeless and be applied to any generation. Nowadays and even when I was in school, the school district would mandate that we teach specific books every semester for every grade level.

I think many students get frustrated because they cannot relate to the novels that are thrown at them. If we have to push these books on our students then at least we can give them alternatives outside the demanded readings. When I would at a native boarding school years ago, my students were reading Achenua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. The book incorporated a lot of proverbs to help simplify and as a display of culture. To help the students better relate to the incoming colonization (forgive me if I ruined the story) and their own experience, students were to bring in proverbs and folklore from their own tribes and culture and then interpret them for the class. This help to show the students that even a Nigerian tribe can have a lot in common with a Native American tribe.

Students also have a problem with required reading materials because of the simple questions: What does this have to with our lives now? This is why we must always bring in outside materials to help complement a novel. Too many of us lay out vocabulary, have students read the chapter and have them answer the questions. It is great to incorporate current events along with a section of the story to show them that what is happening in the story is also happening now.

Another reason that students are unmotivated with class readings is because we never take chances with our text. We, as educators are always playing it same because we do not want our students to be exposed to issues that they probably already have been exposed to. A lot of the problem is not that we are afraid to expose our students to issues that are relevant but many times, we have to get materials approved and proves to be a problem. I remember teaching To Kill a Mockingbird and then hearing a segment on NPR that was discussing the fact that Kansas banned the book due to the racism and the use of the “N” word. God forbid that I student realize that America had a racist past.

Yes, we need to make good use of novels and textbooks but we cannot expect them to teach the class for us. We need to always be ready to innovate and keep our student interested and stimulated. If not, we might as well go make to worksheets and regurgitation.

I've been there before!!!

In Cris Tovani's book, Do I really have to teach reading?, in chapter 3 “Parallel Experiences: Tapping the mother load,” she starts out with a quote from another teacher which states that, “If someone could teach these kids how to read, I could teach them science” (Tovani, 23). Wow, this sums it up! The basic skill to grasping all of the subjects in school is reading. This just doesn't mean, reading a string of words that make a sentence but it means reading, understand and putting it into context. If they (the students) do not understand what they are looking at, then how are they going to get in depth???

One thing in the chapter that Tovani (2004) mentions is modeling. But first of all, we, as educators must find and understand what the students are struggling with. Is it: getting into the text or even reading uninteresting text, even starting a book? Or is it understanding charts, understanding a word problem or even making sense of literary elements in literature and poetry? How can we help our students when we do not even know what is it that they struggling with? What is the first step to AA, admitting that there is a problem, instead of just brushing it off as the students are just being lazy. Once we find what that problem is, then we model the correct way to help solve that problem.

One thing that Tovani (2004) mentions is that sometimes it is hard to sympathize with a student when you do not know what they are experiencing. One suggestion is that we take a text that is really challenging for us and then model it to the students. This what she call, “putting ourselves on the line” (Tovani, 27). With this, students can see that they are not the only one's that are struggling. As we struggle with our text, we need to be aware of what techniques that we use, as good readers, to work our way through the text. Then the students will see what we do and, hopefully, this will rub off on them. Hence, modeling!!!

Last, we need to show our students what work for us as good reader. We can show that if one technique did not work then we went on to another technique. We, as educators, should show our students in our modeling what the benefits of rereading the text. We can also show the students how we get through a boring text. We show strategies on how we stay with an uninteresting text.

Remember, how can we help our students when, first of all, we do not know what the problem even is. Then we do not know what they are going through, then we need to model strategies that help then get through their problems. We should not just brush off the students as being lazy but there is a reason that they do not like to read or that reading does not come easy to them. All we have to do is find out what it is.

What does this have to do with me???

Cris Tovani discusses why what we are teaching as teachers should be important to our students. This comes to the ultimate question of, “So what?” Well, this question just does not apply to only the students. As teachers, we should ask ourselves as educators of why am I teaching this and is this beneficial to my students? I remember growing up in the public schoodistrict in Los Angeles and Las Vegas and hating school. I hated school for the simple fact that nothing that was being taught was not relevant to me even though I was told that I need to know this and plus, school was not very easy to me.

Another thing that Tovani mentions is that not one comprehension strategy is better than the other. I have always thought of what every educational professor has told me over the years that education is, “about the individual student.” As teachers, we need to remember that students all learn differently and we need to not do what is easier for us but what is easier for our students. Have the students work smarter and not harder. It is important that we teach our students to ask questions about the text, try to determine what is important and what is not. Students need to learn how to infer and visualize to make understanding the text easier. Students could learn to make questions to help them be guided through the text.

Another important point that Tovani brings up is that we should be careful not to give our students busy work such as chapter assessment questions and worksheets. Students can see right through this. One strategies that is good to help students be guided through a reading of a textbook is to have the student read the assessment questions before reading the text. Students could also approach a section with KWL. Instead of just reading the sections, students, being coached by the class could plan out the chapter and decide as a class what is important not because the textbook says so but because the students find it relevant.

We should not make reading strategies monotonous and isolated. We should not plan out our lesson plans by one day doing one strategy and then next day doing another strategy. We should always be coming back to the different strategies and keep incorporating them into our lessons so that our students can get use to them and will start to use them on their own.

In this section of the book, Tovani stresses that we, as educators need to make the text relevant to the students. Students need to know know how the text is important to them by relating the text to their life experience and not merely for the fact that we tell them this is important. We need to remember that students bring a lot to the table and each of our students are experts in their life's experience and this needs to be utilized.

Do I Really Have to Teach Reading: Intro

The book that I chose to read for LLSS 538 is “Do I really have to teach reading?” by Cris Tovani. The reason that this book is my choice is because of the struggle of teaching reading in a time of sound bites and Youtube. Students are not just motivated to read and teaching reading nowadays is much like pulling teeth. In my own experience, many of the students read to get it down rather than read to learn something. It is amazing how many students can slip through the cracks and can by a unit or even a course without reading what is being required. Many of the students dread reading the material because, they cannot concentrate long enough to finish the text or that reading so difficult to them that they find coping strategies to get around reading such as Sparknotes, looking at other students note or whatever they can do.

In this book, it will cover:

How teachers can model for their students.
Supplementing and enhancing existing textbooks.
Specific strategies that are taught in details.
Narratives from different secondary school of how reading intruction varies by content.
Examples of work from both, “at-risk” students and students who are college bound.
Ways for students to help capture their thoughts in writing while reading.
Advise on assessing students.
And how to balance content and reading instructions.

This blog will basically follow the book chapter by chapter and will do its best to show the relationship between this books and what the goals of this class.

Some of the things that the first chapter highlights, especially in the sub-section of “Understanding Content Teaching” is what makes a good reader and quick fixes that struggling readers could use to help them get through the text..

Some of the characteristics of a good reader are:
Accessing pre-existing knowledge and trying to connect new knowledge with existing knowledge.
Self-questioning for parts of the text that might not be clear.
Using inferences from the text using cues and background knowledge.
Knowing how to seperate what is important and main ideas from details.

And for quick-fix strategies used by struggling readers when the text become unclear:

It is important for the reader to make a connection between their own life, knowledge of the world or even other texts that they have read compared to topics in the text that is being read.
Making predictions and stopping after reading so much and reflection on what has just been read.
Ask a question and try to answer it through the text.
Create a reading journal or log and add stuff to it after reading so much.
Try to retell what has just been read in your own words.

Again, going back to the beginning of this entry, that students need to not read to get it over with but to read to get something out of the text.

My experience with blogs

My experiences with blogs have been really limited. I have never have a blog or started a blog. My experience with blogs have been limited merely to just reading them. I find politics very interesting. I am not interested in getting involved with politics but I look at it as more of a spectator sport. So, my exposure to blogs have been just reading a few politic blogs.
Due to my lack of exposure, I cannot say that that I have had any problems with them. I due see a rise of teachers using blogs to integrate into their curriculum. I see many teachers, much like this class, requiring students to keep a blog for units or novels that they are reading. This would greatly have an affect on students' reading and writing abilities. I guess, you can compare this to keeping reading logs, which I still use in my class. It seems that all of the writing skills that are being taught in schools are going to technology. I also think that this technology will cause a decline in students handwriting skills. This is fine and all but how does this play for lower social-econimic students who might not have access to computers at home? This might create problems for this demographics of students.
Looking at certain blogs, specifically political blogs like Fire Dog Lake and Talking Memos, it seems that what makes a good blog is the side that they take. I am not speaking about whether you agree with their viewpoints or not but that they are consistent on their viewpoints. These blogs come off as being news site but are merely commentary on top of the news that they are presenting much like the news cycles they are on cable networks nowadays. Like news articles in the newspapers or online publications, blogs' articles are at the same length; being 500-1000 or more words. This is an attractive length due to Americans' short attention span lasting no longer that a 10-15 minute sound bites. I think people who get much of their information from the blogs want to have access to information and opinion fast and at the tip of their fingers and are not interested in reading pages and pages of regurgitated information.
As mentioned before, it seems that blogs are going to be, if they already have not become the new media. If you look at the impression that blogs have made throughout the world. It seems that the world of information has become more open than ever. Meaning, just like the internet in general, anything that you want to find, you can with a touch of a button. You don't even need a computer anymore due to Smart Phone becoming for advanced and becoming cheaper in price. Much like this, blogs will allow everyone and anyone to put their voice out there in the world for anyone to who wishes to read. Who knows what else blogs will lead to next. Cannot wait to see.