A Balanced Reading Diet (D&Z Ch. 4-5)

The premise of chapter four was the concept of a balanced reading diet within in the classroom, and it gave me some things to think about in terms of what readings I should I assign to my future students.  This chapter also revolves around the reading required by the Common Core Standards, which was very valuable to me because it helped me see how I could implement strategies to meet these standards. Nonfiction is the text that the CCSS predicates itself on because according to the authors of this book, nonfiction work provides a deeper and longer understanding of the material (p. 64).  As a future ELA teacher, I find myself more passionate about fiction pieces, and although I do see a place for nonfiction pieces, we still cannot forget about the enjoyment that comes from reading fiction.

One of the biggest issues that the chapter addresses is the amount of time a teacher has to implement all these nonfiction readings. Early in the chapter, it was stated that nonfiction pieces is engaging, but it was contended whether or not there was a enough time to teach whole books. That is when D&Z suggested implementing smaller readings in the classroom, which could be an excerpt from a book or an article. I do find smaller readings to be effective because I think it would be a great way to get more points of view in a particular area of the content. Also, like D&Z states, it will provide all students with an opportunity to engage in class discussions, which is absolutely crucial.

            I really liked how the CCSS is trying to build independent readers, and I really liked how it was mentioned that we, as teachers, shouldn’t be picking all of the reading materials.  It is stated that, “real readers, life long readers, assign themselves” (p.69).  I do agree that students should have some freedom to choose what they want to read, but we also want to make sure that they are selecting the appropriate texts for the appropriate situations.  As teachers, I think we need to teach the students how to choose the right readings, and show them how the process of selecting articles for an academic purpose is different from the process of choosing things to read leisurely.

            The “windows and mirrors” theory is also a really great strategy for picking readings because it is dependent on the students being able to see themselves in the reading, but it also provides the students with the ability to empathize with others.  I never really thought about this before, and as I was reading this section I was trying to think back to my high school experience to see if there were books where I could picture myself. I am sure there were a few books that I felt connected to certain characters, but I just cannot remember it now. However, it is important to choose texts that the student’s can relate to, so that there is a purpose and a motivation to keep them reading. I know I wouldn’t want to read something that was irrelevant to my life.

            Chapter five offered an enormous amount of reading strategies that I found all to be useful.  I won’t go into detail about each one, but rather the ones that I could really see myself as teacher using in the future.  I could definitely see myself implementing “Tweet the Text.” As you know, I am a connoisseur of all things social media, and I do think that it plays huge part in people’s lives today. Like the authors state, most of the kids are using social media, so why not pair a learning activity with it.  Now, I do not want to make the assumption that every single high school teen uses social media, but I would argue to say that most of them do. As a future ELA teacher, I am always looking for innovative ways to implement learning in my classroom, and I like to use technology in any way that I can.  We live in a technological society, where things evolve more quickly every day, and that is the society are students will grow up in, so no matter the subject we teacher we need to teach current technology as well.  This tweet strategy would also be a good way to introduce some poetry lessons because it will provide the student’s with a challenge, seeing as there are only one hundred and forty characters available.