Saturday, March 12, 2011
Read What Interests You
At the library today, a high-school aged boy was dragging his feet behind his mom who was picking out books. When she asked him if he was interested in getting anything, he kinda rolled his eyes and groaned. Until! Lo and behold, his eye glanced over at High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, later made into the movie by the same name starring John Cusack. All of the sudden, he was interested in taking a book home. Sometimes, that's all it takes.
Reading for high school, asking overly-detailed questions about books that teenagers have little to no reason to care about, kids will find a way out of reading it no matter what. The details of a book don't matter, but critical thinking as it applies to reading does, and that's rarely emphasized as much as it should be, if at all-- educators are often focused on getting kids to pass their tests, but don't spend enough time getting them to LIKE reading, which proves to be a much more useful skill in the real world. In fact, half the time it turns them off of reading at a young age... scary!
Find what they're interested in, and you'll see them become readers, and don't tell anyone I said this... but they might even like it.
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Hey there, Hays! As a reading educator, I completely agree that we need to get kids invested in reading to be successful. As a pull-out reading teacher, I don't feel all the pressures of testing that most do. That's where I find my time most precious to get mybstudentsnto just love reading and books. I give my students options...they choose their book, and rather than dragging out the book with boring question after question, they answer a journal question in order to make a connection with the story. They then participate in book club once a week tonshare their journal entries and anything else that compells them. It's a lot of fun to watch as the teacher, because they are enjoying the time to talk about reading, and that's what it should be! I know a lot of teachers lose their students in this and it saddens me. One thing we have going for us in Elementary School is all of the books our students love are the books turned movies, and that really keeps them motivated to keep reading the series...Percy Jackson, Guardians of Ga'Hoole, Harry Potter, diary of a Wimpy Kid, etc. They love reading these series so much that they have been disappearing from my personal library! How can I really be mad, though....kids stealing boooks because they want to read them that bad? I'm sure they will come forth with them, but at least I know they're out there reading for enjoyment anyway!
ReplyDeleteSorry for all the typos...this is coming from my IPad! Haha!
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