I am glad that Dr. Kist chose "In the Middle" by Nancie Atwell for this semester. I can relate to her sentiment "I have almost overcome my anxiety about revealing to the world how hard and slow writing is for me, and how wildly off-base my first attempts can be" (p 26). In junior high, I was asked to attend a writing contest with a small handful of peers. We were given a set amount of time to respond to the prompt/topic given to us that day. I did not enjoy this. My own process of writing can be very time consuming. At first, it takes me a long time to focus my thoughts into one idea. This idea can then change many times through the writing process. I can relate to students who might not work well with forced topics and short time schedules. This was one reason I never entertained the idea of going into journalism.
Furthermore, I like her idea of giving students silent reading once a week. I know how busy life can be outside of class and work. My own habits reserve personal reading time for right before bed. This allows me around 15 minutes until I can't hold my eyes open any longer to read the words!
As with any teaching strategy that seems good while reading, I wonder how it actually works in the classroom. Is silent reading a waste of class time? Should students be writing their assignments at home and not during the school day?
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Silent reading. I think we can all say that we've had to do some form of silent reading as students in our classrooms. I have to say that giving once a week for silent reading is not a bad idea. When I observed Springfield High School a year ago, one of the English teachers actually had Fridays dedicated to silent reading. And the best part---students were able to read whatever novel they liked! As I observed, the students really seemed to enjoy this and it gave a lot of time for the teacher to catch up on things, such as grading papers. This idea kind of goes along with the NY Times article we read, about giving our students choice.
ReplyDeleteI can say that I really don't mind silent reading..in a student perspective. But there will always be students who get off track and ways that we have to figure out how to make the time and even assess our students.
Reading builds vocabulary, writing skills, and reading skills. So I think that allowing for silent reading often in our classrooms is appropriate.