Comments on: A Reading Continuum

By: Stance or subtance at The Illuminated Dragon

Stance or subtance at The Illuminated Dragon — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 02:23:59 +0000

[...] After reading this post by Doug at Borderland I began to reflect on my reading habits since the creation of my bloglines account. He says, [...]

By: Doug

Doug — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 01:04:15 +0000

It’s a good question. Off the top of my head, I know that Lemony Snickett’s books do this. I also remember that in Esperanza Rising, Experanza’s experience as a student in Mexico when she was a rich girl set her apart from the field workers she had to live with in California, where she was an “illegal.” In Breaking Through, by Francisco Jimenez, he tells about his experience having to study and work his way through high school.

I’ll think on it a bit more. Maybe other readers have some ideas.

By: Mary Lee

Mary Lee — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 23:32:10 +0000

Franki is starting a list of books about books and reading on our blog. We work with elementary school kids who are just beginning to develop a sense of self as a reader — an important conversation to start early and revisit often if we are going to raise more than non-readers or funcitonal readers.

Any short texts/picture books/excerpts you use to talk to your students about becoming a reader and the importance of reading?

By: susan funk

susan funk — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 23:57:04 +0000

More on this topic on my blog today. Feel free to drop by.

I’ve been trying to put links in but I’m not having much success. Here’s yet another try.

By: Miss Profe

Miss Profe — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:18:42 +0000

The fact that students are not reading much beyond what is required for their classes saddens me greatly. As a child who was not only read to from a very early age, but was also taken to the library at age six for my first library card, and is a certified bookstore junkie, not reading in all of its modes - I can hardly imagine life without it. Not to mention that I am

As a teacher of Spanish to speakers of English, I see the direct impact of the lack of deep reading on the part of my students. Their background knowledge re: the world is not as rich and as textured. Moreover, their writing lacks depth and complexity of thought in their development of ideas, not to mention sound grammar and mechanics. Although I teach beginning and low-intermediate-level students, their ability to imagine, and to create from nothing, is so dramatically limited even when compared to students I taught five years ago, and I attribute this to being a population of non-readers.

A final example: I oversee the after-school study hall for middle schoolers at my school. The expectation is: When there is no homework to do for a class, have a book in your backpack. Hardly any of the students comply with this; they’d rather play an “educational” game on the computer, or read email. I suppose that I should be somewhat grateful that they do pull a magazine off the rack from time to time, but, this is hardly the deep reading to which you are referring.

My capacity to create with the language as a writer is so greatly enhanced by my wide range of reading interests.