Journal Readings

All of these articles were really interesting to me. They each gave me ideas for the classroom, but also made me question some current practices, that really aren’t helping students.
The article about learning how to annotate showed just how many students don’t know how to do this. In a college setting, I cannot tell you how many students I see highlighting a text, and then wondering why they did poorly on a test. In my younger years, I even did this some, until I realized that the highlighter wasn’t some magic tool that was helping me to comprehend. I had to teach myself to engage with the text differently. However, so many students have not, and unfortunately do not figure out that simply highlighting doesn’t mean you understand a text.
I really liked in this article, how they gave advice and alternatives to annotation. I feel like a lot of things we read give things to do, that will only work in the perfect, ideal school setting. But, this article did a good job of giving alternatives like the dialectical journal which will be feasible anywhere.
I really liked the approach to book groups in the “voices” article. This article really got me thinking about a classic text, which we are starting in our 12th grade English class this week. He seems to use different books based on common themes. However, I was wondering if this same type of idea or theory could be applied to The Canterbury Tales? I feel like it would be good for the students to choose one tale. I could help them based on their personalities. Then we could follow the pattern of the book groups to discuss the book as a whole. I also think that the reader’s bill of rights would be a good thing to post up on the wall in my classroom one day, to show students that they have choices when it comes to reading.
I loved the reading workshop idea. I think it’s pointless for teachers to assign stupid worksheets each night, just so the students have homework. This idea would be great for high school students, who I feel need things scheduled, because they are usually very busy. However, for my classroom, I think I would cut it down to 30 minutes, 4 nights a week. Also, instead of just checking their page number, I think that every Monday, I will take the fist 15 minutes of class to randomly select 5 students to quickly discuss their books with. I just thought it was a great idea, and I will probably use this approach in my classroom one day.
The Vacca article hit on what some of the other ones were trying to show, which is readers have to feel confidant in their abilities, or else they get frustrated. For that reason, if they need to read lower level things to improve their skills, that’s o.k. I completely agree with this. Some students just aren’t great readers, and they can really get down if they are forced to read something that is way too challenging.
The last article sums up a major issue, that collectively all of the articles were showing. For some reason, in elementary school, kids enjoy reading more. I think it is, because more teachers are incorporating the six T’s in these grades. However, in high school, students really lost their love of reading. I know I did. As high school teachers, we need to be more aware of the 6 T’s in our planning, so student can become better readers, and hopefully find that appreciation that somehow gets lost in the high school years.