Teaching the Reader

From the desk of Karen…

Educators talk a lot about shifts these days: changing outdated teaching habits, aligning our work with brain research, learning to make our teaching stronger. Well, this is a major, earthquake-shattering shift for many.

“I am not simply teaching the reading; I am teaching the reader.” ~Kelly Gallagher

Teaching the reading is not the same as teaching the reader how to read. Teaching the reading usually means that teachers assign pages and then ask questions. Rather than teaching how to read, we’re checking to make sure students did the reading. We ask them about details in books instead of how they learned to read better based on lessons we taught them. We quiz kids.

Some take this process a step farther. We want to make sure readers understand deeper meaning of texts. So, we ask questions using different levels pulled from Bloom’s taxonomy.

What do we get for all of our hard work if we don’t make the shift? Teachers who choose, read and know books. Students who don’t. Students who report they aren’t reading and hate it. Spark Notes sales that soar.

Worse, students don’t read for pleasure either. They don’t know how to pick books in order to follow a topic, a genre, or a favorite author. Their books are preselected for them by level or list. (View “Why Students Don’t Read What’s Assigned In Class”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gokm9RUr4ME&feature=youtu.be )

Gallagher was the one who brought the death of reading out into the open in his book Readicide, How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It. He asked tough questions, like “…Shouldn’t schools be the place where students interact with interesting books? Shouldn’t the faculty have an ongoing laser-like commitment to put good books in our students’ hands? Shouldn’t this be a front-burner issue at all times?”

So, how do we teach the reader? Exactly what does Gallagher mean?

You have a chance to hear directly from the author. ERG is hosting a conference on July 29 this summer in Winston-Salem, and Kelly Gallagher is the only speaker. His central idea? His new book, Building Deeper Readers and Writers. Spend half a day learning to shift your thinking in the teaching of reading and half a day in the teaching of writing.

What’s new? What works? What’s old and still works? How do these ideas jive with Common Core and the expectations of my state and district?

When you’re this close to the source, you owe it to yourself to stop by. Check out the details. Please join in.

Find out more: http://www.myedresource.com/erg-will-host-kelly-gallagher-event-on-july-29-2013/