"Readicide"

Blog Post “Readicide”

I was thrilled to find out I was given another opportunity to read another one of Kelly Gallagher’s book’s at the beginning of the quarter. I was able to read one of her other books last quarter and learned so many great things. One thing I knew before reading this book was that students today are not reading enough plain and simple. I am one of those people included who are not reading enough, and are spending way to much of my spare time indulging on Netflix. At the beginning of the book, Gallagher explains that Students are not spending enough time in school. After reading this statement I went and asked my mentor teacher what she thought about giving her students time to read in class. She explained to me that her opinion was that “giving students class time to read is a waste of time”. Along with my mentor teacher I believe that many teachers today would agree with her and maybe a handful might disagree. I think many people would be surprised at the fact that on average American teenagers spend almost two hours of leisure time watching television. “One average, Americans ages fifteen to twenty-four spend almost two hours a day watching television, and only seven minutes of their leisure time on reading”(41). Needless to say another fact Gallagher explains that nearly half of all Americans of the same ages explained in the last fact do not read books at all for pleasure. These facts are so detrimental to the language arts education of our students. All students should be reading to further their education and understanding in literature. Literature allows students to learn how think critically and with out that skill students will not be successful in college. I can attest to this. I feel like I was a student who did not read enough throughout elementary, and high school for pleasure. The result of not spending enough time reading is when I was forced to read it wasn’t what I wasted to read so I learned to hate reading as a whole. I hated reading textbooks that didn’t interest me so I simply just didn’t read. I really think I could have really benefited from reading more literature in my youth and that would have advanced my skill of thinking critically at the college level. One idea that I really would love to implement in my classroom is “Article of the Week”. I think it kills two birds with one stone. The article of the week allows students to know what’s going on in the world around them. It also allows students to ask questions, highlight what they know and also reflect on what they read. I really could write so many things I have taken from this book but that could take all day. One last thing that I wan to mention are some of the ways I learned and loved on how to prevent “readicide” using the 50/50 approach. Gallagher explains that if a teacher wants to develop a recreational reader they must “provide adequate time in school to read so that students have time to develop a recreational reading habit”. She also explains that if teachers want to develop academic readers they must demand that students continue to read books that may be a shade too hard for them and this is why the teacher is in the room. One last statement that I believe to be the most helpful in ending “readicide” is to surround academic text with high-interest authentic real world reading. All in all this book has so much information to comphrened which is why I will continue to reread this book for ways to keep my students reading and to prevent “readicide” in my classroom.