Chapt 5

Gallager sums up the Readicide problem and brings up many practical solutions. He also explores the successful educational model used in Finland, the global educational leaders. Although Finnish schools do not have the level of cultural diversity or size of the US, their priority is on reading, comprehension, and reaching deeper cognitive processing, and not shallow coverage for standardized tests. Their focus on literacy is producing the best students in the world. Maybe we should be examining how the US can adapt this successful program into our failing educational system before our students and our nation slip from global competitor and superpower to a cautionary tail of internal social, and educational decay. I believe that shallow learning benefits no one. It hurts us on a international level by producing scores of graduates unable to compete in the increasingly high tech, and literate global economy. We are slipping, and will soon be surpassed if our schools continue to focus on shallow learning and ridiculous standardized testing routines. Penalizing schools for failing is also absurd. How counter productive can our government be when they withhold funding from schools who desperately need help with struggling students.  I hope Washington sees the light, and changes these policies- soon.

Chapt 4

Gallager talks about under teaching more difficult text in this chapter. I witnessed this more than anything other than the intensive testing focus in my classroom observations. This particular incidence concerned lessons on Greek and Roman history. The teacher told the kids to read the chapter and do worksheets sorting through complex vocabulary like Epicureanism, Hellenism, Socratic Method, and Hippocratic Oath on their own. I actually asked the teacher about the difficult and generally unfamiliar words, he said that he didn't actually teach these harder terms,  just exposed the class to them. I thought this was rather bizarre because these words were included on the chapter vocabulary lists the kids would eventually be tested on. They had to define and be able to explain such conceptual terminology without any support or background information. Personally I could see the frustration of the students, when pronunciation was an issue let alone comprehension.

Chapt 3

Gallager talks about the prevalence of over teaching a difficult text to the point of destroying any interest the students might have or find reading for enjoyment. In essence the very people who proclaim to promote reading are in fact killing off the lifelong readers before they have the opportunity to develop their own interests in books with a myriad of analysis worksheets, sticky notes, vocabulary  etc. His strategies for reversing this are to frame a book like Hamlet in real word situations- he uses a father's advice to his son to generate authentic interest for his students. A guided tour- teacher's guide students through half of a difficult text, then let them finish the book on their own. Adopt 50/50 approach to text selection- half academic and half student selected novels. Topic Floods for generating discussions that relate to the themes of a text. One-pager a sheet to promote accountability for independent reading, and of course giving them time and book selections to generate real reading interest.
I really like the one pager and topic flood ideas for social studies applications. I could see great discussions on real world issues with this strategy. The one pager is a short but sweet way to track student reading for those who may be less inclined to actually read during silent reading, which I will adopt for my classes.
One potential problem I see with Gallager's opinions are: he has great ideas, but in English classes where most of these difficult texts would be taught, implementing his strategies in the micro-managed, high stakes testing environment AYP generates, I can imagine can be very difficult. How much choice do English teachers have to deviate from the highly structured test prep models schools are requiring now to raise scores? I don't know, but I've been told its not much. In social studies I can see his solutions being implemented without much difficulty, except for the analysis of poetry, parts of speech, literary devices, and other English topics that most social studies teachers aren't trained to teach. Historical texts yes, this is a great way to frame and promote interest in primary sources.

Chapt 2

I posted this last week under my comments, instead of making a  new post- sorry guys still learning.

Gallager talks about the removal of reading materials, like novels and longer more challenging pieces from the classrooms, the vanishing of silent reading time, and teaching of background information that would've accompanied a novel, all to allow more test prep time. This focus on shallow test reading is affecting brain development. To increase comprehension ability, the brain needs longer passages of written material to process and form connections with prior/future knowledge. Having kids miss this important step in development is not only a disservice to their education, but its ruining a whole generation of would be readers. They aren't exposed to the rich, detailed stories told only through longer works like novels. I rarely read anything else, although because of this class, I have recently found youth novels more appealing because of my time constraints. I still read at least two books/month for enjoyment. For me reading before bed is my wind down time. Some days I don't even turn on the TV. I just curl up on the couch with a good book, my coffee, and my cats. So to learn schools are removing this wonderful medium from their shelves is truly disheartening. I came from a seriously dysfunctional home, and books were my escape from the realities of my life. I found solace in pages where I could be transported somewhere else into my world of happiness, adventure or imagination. I don't know how I would've coped with life then if I didn't have a school library filled with great stories of people who survived and changed their stars.

September 17, 2010 1:56 PM

Readicide Blog

I never did this before. Blogging- such a strange word- much like Skype and Pedagogy -one of the weirdest sounding words-sounds like a strange fungus instead of an educational model. LOL! Anyway, from what I've read, the book seems like its going to be pretty good and thought provoking. It should inspire some interesting conversations.