Friday, April 9, 2010

Blog #7: The Conclusion

From this whole experience I've basically learned that you can't takes students understandings for granted. I think that when I first went into this I assumed that I would be explaining mostly science terms, however as the weeks passed I noticed that I defined regular vocabulary words as well and scientific words. If anything this whole experience has taught me how on track Readicide is with today's students. I've really had my eyes opened when it comes to using vocabulary in the classroom and how important it is to help students understand that reading isn't just done in the language arts classroom but it can be done anywhere with anything. I also think that it is important to stress to students that while they are in the science classroom, they are scientists and as such they need to be able to read and write like scientists. I think this intimidates a lot of students but if we as teachers make them understand that reading as scientists or mathematicians or historians or artists or whatever is not necessarily different from just reading as much as they will be looking for different things and writing in different ways. This whole experience feels like an affirmation of the things we done in class and I hope that when I have my own classroom I can continue to use these techniques to encourage students to read no matter the subject.

2 comments:

  1. I agree with what you said about your expectations going in. I really did not expect students to be such terrible readers. It was a bit of a shock to me. I had to explain words that I thought were basic and they should have known. And the lack of motivation to learn or read is profound. So many students are so lackadaisical. I kept thinking, "what do they think their future holds if they keep this attitude up". They are already in high school, not much time left to turn it around. I really tried to give these students a lot of positive reinforcement in the hopes that they would find a bit more motivation. It is just sad how many students cannot read well and are not motivated to do so.

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  2. It's so true that reading is essential to all subjects, including science, math, etc. A strong literacy foundation can help you in almost all aspects of school and life. I too agree that Readicide was dead on, unfortunately......and it seems we have a long way to go to get to where Gallagher wants us to end up at. But I think the techniques he describes are a good start.

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