Chapter Two
(Page 24) “As a mature reader, your mental strategies have become mainly automatic and unconscious.”
Although she wasn’t talking about reading (and we won’t get into what she was talking about!), I’ll borrow a line from Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman: “I’m like a robot. I just do it.” So many of us are like robots when we read our content…it just seems to happen without much work. I think this is why it’s so hard for us to teach our students HOW to read. We are so familiar with our material that it’s hard to break down our thinking and what’s going on in our heads when we do read. But think about when you teach something you’ve never taught before. Is it as easy as teaching a book or concept you’ve taught before? How much better to do understand a text after you’ve taught it a couple of times? Or how easy do you think it would be to read a biology textbook? (That would be too scary for me!) We need to remember that even though we’re familiar with our material, our students are not, and we need to break down our thinking for them so that they can understand how to read text in our content. This will help not only in our class but other classes in the same content area as well as those dreaded standardized tests.
Chapter Nine
(Page 202) “Book Clubs help…differentiate instruction in (the) classroom…by using temporary kid-driven forms of grouping and re-grouping.”
Ah, the magic word: differentiate. Book Clubs really are an easy way to achieve differentiation. The key is that the students get to choose what they want to read, so they can’t complain about it too much! Even though the students are reading different texts, you’re still able to cover the same concept and all of the students are able to get something from it, not just those who always do their work.
(Page 24) “As a mature reader, your mental strategies have become mainly automatic and unconscious.”
Although she wasn’t talking about reading (and we won’t get into what she was talking about!), I’ll borrow a line from Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman: “I’m like a robot. I just do it.” So many of us are like robots when we read our content…it just seems to happen without much work. I think this is why it’s so hard for us to teach our students HOW to read. We are so familiar with our material that it’s hard to break down our thinking and what’s going on in our heads when we do read. But think about when you teach something you’ve never taught before. Is it as easy as teaching a book or concept you’ve taught before? How much better to do understand a text after you’ve taught it a couple of times? Or how easy do you think it would be to read a biology textbook? (That would be too scary for me!) We need to remember that even though we’re familiar with our material, our students are not, and we need to break down our thinking for them so that they can understand how to read text in our content. This will help not only in our class but other classes in the same content area as well as those dreaded standardized tests.
Chapter Nine
(Page 202) “Book Clubs help…differentiate instruction in (the) classroom…by using temporary kid-driven forms of grouping and re-grouping.”
Ah, the magic word: differentiate. Book Clubs really are an easy way to achieve differentiation. The key is that the students get to choose what they want to read, so they can’t complain about it too much! Even though the students are reading different texts, you’re still able to cover the same concept and all of the students are able to get something from it, not just those who always do their work.
Something for y’all to think about with our class book clubs: Do you want to experience the book club as the students do where you each have a “role” when you come to class, or would you rather conduct it as an adult book club where everyone just shares their thoughts? Or do you want to do a little of both? Think about it! If you have strong convictions about one way or the other, you may want to post it on the blog to help sway your colleagues. We’ll make decisions in our next class!
