{"id":46,"date":"2015-01-19T02:24:48","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T02:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/?p=46"},"modified":"2015-01-19T02:24:48","modified_gmt":"2015-01-19T02:24:48","slug":"building-a-reading-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/2015\/01\/19\/building-a-reading-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a Reading Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"reading\"<\/a>MY ACTION PLAN: TAKING A HARD LOOK AT MY OWN PRACTICE, AND WORKING FROM MY CLASSROOM OUT, I WILL STRENGTHEN THE READING CULTURE IN OUR SCHOOL.<\/strong> Because, as an English teacher, I feel like I\u2019m good at getting my students excited about English; however, I\u2019m not so sure I\u2019m fostering a love of reading. (Yes, I think it is possible to love English Class without loving reading).<\/em><\/p>\n

As part my graduate studies, I recently reread Kelly Gallagher\u2019s \u2018Readicide\u2019. In doing so I was reminded of how great Mr. Gallagher is, and how much I love his take on, and approach to, the issue of reading with today\u2019s young folks (the issue being, by and large, that teenagers don\u2019t seem to read literary texts much anymore). Yeah sure, Gallagher is an extremely passionate high school English teacher, and in that way his ideas are likely narrow and biased, but what do I care? I\u2019m making an action plan on something I believe in and he\u2019s throwing fuel on my fire. I\u2019m good with it. I\u2019m happy, for the purpose of this action plan, to consider all he says as absolute truth.<\/p>\n

Before I roll this out, I should also say that under the guidance of friend\/mentor\/learning-guru\/Jedi-master\/former colleague and boss Dave Krocker (whom many of you are lucky enough to know), I\u2019ve taken this initiative before. And now, 18 months into my new life at Rothesay Netherwood School, I\u2019m excited to take the initiative again, this time with the added advantage of experience, distance, thought, reflection, this most recent experience with \u2018Readicide\u2019 and, of course, the many wonderful insights and ideas I look forward to gathering from Cohort 21.<\/p>\n

The issue:<\/strong> I think, really, there are two issues, the first being that kids don\u2019t really read anymore and the numbers are dwindling. The second issue is, of course, that reading\u2019s kind of important.\u00a0 In skipping a dissertation on the essential skill of reading in learning and life, I\u2019ll also highlight Gallagher\u2019s contention that nothing in a student suggests long term \u201csuccess\u201d, as a learner and beyond, more than a love of reading. In that sense, instilling a love of reading is the VERY best thing we can do for a student. Wow! I should say, that as a father of a 2 \u00bd year old who LOVES her books, I think about this all the time. Makena has a love of reading already (and she can\u2019t even really read yet). Kids love books and reading. What happens?<\/p>\n

The Hard Part, Addressing the Cruel Irony:<\/strong> Gallagher suggests that even the most passionate of English Teacher\u2019s actively kill a love of reading by over-teaching the text (I love Billy Collin\u2019s \u2018Introduction to Poetry\u2019: \u201cBut all they want to do\/ is tie the poem to a chair with rope\/and torture a confession out of it.\/They begin beating it with a hose\/ to find out what it really means\u201d). Yet, as teachers, we\u2019re still responsible for modelling good reading. \u00a0And so, it\u2019s up to me I guess to find that perfect balance with our curriculum texts \u2013 finding the important moment to enter a text for deeper analysis, while also easing the burden to allow for enjoyment of reading. This is, by far, the most complicated and difficult step in my action plan. I\u2019ll keep you posted on this inward journey.<\/p>\n

The Easy Part, Celebrating Books and Reading<\/strong>. The big part of this plan, really, is demanding recreational reading, or reading outside of the curriculum. Again, I\u2019m trusting Gallagher here who insists that if given access to great books and the freedom to choose, as well as time for reading, teenagers will love reading. At the moment, it\u2019s a six part plan following Kelly Gallagher\u2019s framework to fairly drastically change the routines of my 9th<\/sup> and 10th<\/sup> grade classes. It is also a very organic plan so, you know… ideas please!!! Anything to bring excitement to reading and to enhance the conversations students are having about reading.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Expose students to a wide range of literature.<\/strong> Our amazing librarians will play an active role here in presenting reading lists and offering suggestions. Students and faculty will also be important contributors to the list.<\/li>\n
  2. Reading Aloud.<\/strong> From students and other faculty members, we will celebrate books daily with \u2018read alouds\u2019.<\/li>\n
  3. Building the classroom library.<\/strong> I will be busy on Amazon. As a student endorses a book, I will be buying it and stocking our shelves.<\/li>\n
  4. Class-time for reading<\/strong>. It\u2019s so easy to get caught in the urgency of a lesson\/unit\/course, and often this urgency is self-imposed. And, as I\u2019ve said, what could be more important than fostering a love of reading? Gallagher says it\u2019s essential and so I\u2019m going for it: meaningful class-time for recreational reading.<\/li>\n
  5. 20 minutes a day outside of class-time.<\/strong> This is straight from Dave Krocker: Jim McNair, leading researcher for reading fluency, finds \u201cThe average reading speed of a child in primary school is around 200 words per minute (wpm).\u201d 140 minutes X 200 wpm = 28 000 words per week. The average book for young adult fiction has about 16 000 words. Aren\u2019t you kind of inspired to find 20 minutes in a day now for reading?<\/li>\n
  6. Keeping the students accountable by extending the conversation<\/strong>. This is tricky, as I don\u2019t want any part of this endeavour entering the realm of \u201cproject\u201d, thereby defeating the purpose. I know this is romantic, but students will not be rewarded with grades, they will be rewarded with a love of reading. In general, I want students talking about books, sharing books, getting excited about books. I want them to know what each other are reading. I want a student\u2019s next book to be one that another student just put down \u2013 that he\/she couldn\u2019t wait for that student to put down.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In terms of tech.<\/strong> \u00a0Well, I\u2019m wide open on this. I envision some kind of google spread-sheet where students can track each-others reading experiences. Certainly students will be asked to tweet regularly about their reading experiences. Really though, this is where I\u2019m looking to Cohort 21 members \u2013 for ideas to enhance and broaden reading conversations within the school and beyond, without getting bogged down in the process of doing so. I have some ideas on how we might connect with authors and fellow readers out there, but I\u2019d love to learn from some of your experiences.<\/p>\n

    I look forward to sharing my journey and learning from all of you. Happy reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    MY ACTION PLAN: TAKING A HARD LOOK AT MY OWN PRACTICE, AND WORKING FROM MY CLASSROOM OUT, I WILL STRENGTHEN THE READING CULTURE IN OUR SCHOOL. Because, as an English teacher, I feel like I\u2019m good at getting my students excited about English; however, I\u2019m not so sure I\u2019m fostering a love of reading. (Yes, … Continue reading “Building a Reading Life”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}