Observing Literacy in Action

• Having taken this class it's amazing how much it has opened my eyes to reading in schools and made me more aware of its presence or in most cases lack there of. But luckily at the high school that i am teaching in, in Jones County they seem to have caught on to the lack of reading in schools and are making adjustments. The first week that i was teaching, on wed and thurs the first 15 mins of each class the students had to read. They were allowed to read anything they wanted and for the students who didn't come prepared, the teacher had "history" themed magazines in the corner for them to flip through. I was actually pleasantly surprised to see how many students actually brought books from home and what they were reading. On a more negative note, i am teaching a high school government class and when the teacher handed me the book they were teaching, from the first thing i noticed was that it was the same book that i was taught from when i was in highschool (5 yrs ago) AND THE BOOK WAS THE 1999 EDITION! That's over 10 yrs ago! Not that the basic principles of Government have changed but you know we have gone through an election and we have a whole new set of people doing things, so a lot of the names and numbers are wrong in the book.
  
• I did my first literacy assignment last Thursday. It went rather well, i learned a lot from it that i believe will help prepare me better next time. I'll get more in depth in the class discussion.
  
• Readicide Chpt 3 i found fairly interesting. I've always been an avid reader since i was a kid so sometimes it's weird for me to imagine someone not enjoying reading. And i really connected with the author when he talked about "flow" and "Chop chop curriculum". When you're reading a book and you're so in to it, it is amazing how you get lost in it. You don't want to put it down, but at the same time you don't want the book to end. I find myself reading at a slow pace at the beginnings of book, a fast pace in the middle towards the end and then when i see i only have a few chapters left i slow down the pace because i don't want the book and the story to end. And i never thought about it this way but this whole idea of chopping up books and having students pull things out of every section really is killing it for the students. Instead of reading for pleasure and taking what they want to out of it (because almost every book means something different to everyone that reads it) the students read to find what they are "supposed to find". The underlying themes and the roles the different characters play etc. It makes reading less enjoyable because students are only looking at the small pictures and parts when the things that are going to change them are the wholes.
  

History in the making

• One of the ideas i've been coming up with for the literacy explorations is I would definitely like to incorporate the "article-of-the-week" idea and implement the idea of think-pair-share. I believe in a history class it is important to not understand history in the past tense but also understand history in the making, with students understanding what is going on in the world as we speak. This will be one of the first literacy explorations i incorporate into my classroom.
• Chpt 2 of Readicide I found fairly interesting in the sense that it brought in new ideas that I had never really considered before. For example, this whole idea of a political cartoon. A student can look at it, read what's written and still have no idea what's going on because they aren't coming into the situation with prior knowledge of what's going on in the picture. If students knew current events and read more things that were pertinent to the world outside of themselves than they would come into situations as a more well rounded individual and in turn perform better.
  

Readicide intro and chpt 1

• The message that i got from chpt 1 was how schools focus so much on test scores that they are cheating their students out of a real education. With school systems and states requiring teachers to teach so many standards per course it is almost impossible for teachers to cover all material in an effective way where the students are really grasping what the concepts are. Students are reading for the answers to the test they are not comprehending and enjoying what they are reading.
  
• I got from this chapter that as a teacher we have to work hard to find the happy median of fitting in all the standards but taking time to really focus on the important concepts that students need to get out of a content. We have to juggle to appease everybody, students, test scores and standards and some how hope that in the midst of it all the students retain something to carry on with them to the next grade.
• When i personally was in school as a student i enjoyed reading on a personal level but i hardly enjoyed anything that i read that was assigned to me. It was hard to get into something i was forced to read at a certain pace, on top of all the other subjects homework and after school activities. I found myself looking at spark notes and cliff notes for most of the books because i did not have time to fully read them. And when i did read i found myself daydreaming and not actually comprehending what i was reading. But now when i look back i wish i had learned and retained more from the books because i hardly remember anything i read in high school.
• Breaking it down i believe is one of the key concepts i have obtained from this class that i feel will be important for me to apply to in my future classes. Really looking at short passages and having students analyzing them and explaining them to me and the class. And it's not only important to pick out what they understand but help talk them through what they don't understand and help them build problem solving skills in reading that they can adapt to other forms of literature and other passages they will read that are confusing.