Why a good book is a secret door

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The Blog About Miller Chapter One

The Blog About Miller Chapter One

When Miller described her daughter in the introduction, it reminded me of me in middle school as the Twilight series hit its peak of popularity.  However, I saw myself more in Miller predicting the likely future of her daughter’s friends.  The friends who will eventually grow up and stop reading for pleasure as life will get in the way and school will suck the fun out of reading.  

Ideas that are resonating with me but am also afraid of is the fake reader.  When observing my own classroom one day, I am sure that I will be able to spot a fake reader or two.  The challenge and fear, come from not knowing how to address the student so that they will continue reading but not view reading as a form of punishment.  

However, I really am looking forward to teaching reading and mixing it up.  My personal reading habits consist mostly of short articles found on the web and magazines.  In school, when I get to pick, I stick to short stories.  In my classroom, I am hoping to avoid workbooks but rather encourage actual books.  Students should have the freedom to choose what they read at levels appropriate for themselves.  Ideally, I would rotate books in my classroom library so if I wanted students to read a book with a particular theme, the library would books with a common theme.   Students could pick whatever book they wanted and would never have to know that their books all have the same underlying theme.  By doing this, I believe classroom discussion will be diverse and interesting to see how books connect to one another.

One Reply to “The Blog About Miller Chapter One”

  1. When I was reading Miller’s introduction and first chapter, I realized that I totally fake-read, too; I simple peruse the book/article so that I can identify the gist of it and do well in class. I hope that I too will be able to spot the fake reader in my class so that I can use my teacherly influence to get them enthralled by books once again. Your ideas about using less workbooks in class in order to keep students engaged with their reading is awesome, by the way. I’d never thought about how much I hated pointless workbooks and worksheets while I was in school until now. Perhaps they are partly to blame of my reading habits now (or lack thereof)? I wholeheartedly agree that students should pick their own books to read for class projects and stuff.

    Also, I was totally in on that embarrassing Twilight bandwagon in middle school as well. I made my mom buy me all of the books! Yikes.

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