Think about a topic or topics of interest to you. What motivates you to read about this topic? What motivates you to pick up a book or a newspaper or a magazine and read about this topic? Share that information with us and then comment on the following quote:
"Schools do not pay enough attention to students' curiosity and imagination. As a result, students disengage from active participation in the academic life of the classroom..there is little satisfaction to be gained from it." Agree? Disagree? Why?
Sadly, I have to agree... I know that many schools need to keep up the pace that is required by the state, thus leaving the child behind not in grade level but interest and maybe ability. I currently work with high school students in the special education department. Getting most of them to read to themselves, let alone out loud takes a miracle.
ReplyDeleteOur school has its own newspaper, and whenever these same students are in the paper for sports or another event that they are proud of the "I don't want to read or I can not read" issue goes out the window. They are very quick to read out loud about themselves even if the struggle with the content and pronunciation. They want and deserve the pat on the back for the effort. They just see this as bragging. It is important that each time they take the initiative to come out of their comfort zone we as (teachers or future teachers) make sure that everything possible is done to welcome them into the uncertain zone and guide them into the welcome zone.
As for me, I am not one to favor book reading. By this I mean that I do not curl up with a good book at night for entertainment. Reading for me has to be factual or informative. In order for me to want to read I have to know that I am learning from the experience. Romance novels and other forms of reading never kept my interest. Science fiction books as well as mythology books are also something that I enjoy to read.
Thank you
Ciao
Tracy L Jorge
"Schools do not pay enough attention to students' curiosity and imagination. As a result, students disengage from active participation in the academic life of the classroom..there is little satisfaction to be gained from it." I agree with this quote, because schools are not interested in students feelings and thoughts. Which is not getting the most out of all the students because they are forcing them to learn from text that are boring and hard to read.
ReplyDeleteIn my past history in school all the text that was handed to us were either really long, hard to read, or just really difficult to understand. The teacher would always give us pages to read in the text and it was always a lot of pages. I would get through five pages and then ask myself what did I just read. I see this being a problem in todays education because it doesn't motivate students to read more, it declines the willingness to read. The students in education are forced to read text they do not find interesting.
Some ways I think we can get students to do readings are to assign readings outside of class of a book of their choice. Give the students the openness to teach themselves. The students can give themselves papers and quizzes. The students will be more willing to read the books they choose because the book will be a book of their choice and what they find interesting.
I thoroughly enjoy reading biographical, more so autobiographical, pieces of literature. I really enjoy learning about other people’s lives and the experiences they may have gone through. I am especially interested in autobiographical or biographical books that have to do with drug and alcohol addiction, abuse, and recovery because of the experiences I have gone through with my own family. I like reading these particular pieces because it makes me feel like I am not alone in my feelings or emotions or even the experiences themselves.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I agree, but also do not fully agree with this quote. The schools are given a curriculum that the teachers are required to follow. That being said, the teachers are required to hand out the Shakespeare plays or the Dickens novels and have their students read them. I feel like the active participation and the students’ engagement depends on the teacher. If the teacher hands out the book or play or other item and instructs that the students read “x” amount of pages, chapters, poems, etc. by a given date, the students 100% are not going to like the assignment. But if the teacher gives out the assignment, participates in the readings with the students somehow, and sparks their imaginations and creativities, then the students are going to love the assignments. I heard a story once about how a teacher at my high school, who sadly retired before I had started, would dress up as a different character in a book or play whenever they were working on a new book. But he never did it at the same point of the book (i.e. beginning, middle, end) so the students had to wait and see who he was going to choose to be, and whether it was going to be someone they had discussed in the reading yet, or if it was going to be an introduction to a new character. Doing things like this led to the students active engagement and participation in the reading for the most part because they always wanted to make sure they understood and could identify the character the teacher had dressed up like or would later on be able to pick the character out when they were coming across it in the reading. I feel like it all depends on the teachers’ roles in the reading assignment.