Reading in the Wild
Based upon the reading by Donalyn Miller, I felt the importance of building strong, life-long readers within the classroom to hopefully encourage them to continue reading in the future. I really like what Miller said about “readers who incorporate reading into their lives along with everything else that interests them. Some of my favorite parts about reading, is making connections with my reading outside of class. Some challenges that I feel with arise will be getting all of my students interested in reading, as well as having them continue to read outside of school. For myself as being someone who enjoys reading, when the reading is my choice I had a book log of how many hours I read and somedays that wasn’t enough to get me to read at home. The thing that excites me about teaching reading is getting the students to want to read. I really want them to feel confident in their reading, to help them become successful adults. It was surprising that developing life-long reading habits matters not only to the individual but to society in general. I never thought about reading this way, it is really eye opening. I fear that I won’t be able to dedicate as much time to reading in my classroom as I would like because of all the other curriculum that needs to be taught. It is my hope that students with have enough time in class as well as outside of class to read with many support systems put into place to encourage reading. I am curious to read more about Donalyn and Susie’s take on reading.
One Reply to “Reading in the Wild”
We share the same fear in regards to not knowing whether our students will continue to read outside of school. I definitely want to have reading as a focus in my classroom. I think we’ll be able to spark interest in out students reading. I think the point is to give them choice and go out of way to make sure each student has something they are interested in. As long as we show them how much reading can do for us and implement it as a hobby rather than something purely academic then they will get it. At the end of the day we as teachers can only do so much. Something that I have started practicing after the first chapter was making time. I think it’s easy to get caught up in life and work and think we don’t have time to read, but it’s the little moments like walking to class or waiting in line when we can squeeze in a couple of pages. This method can be a way of showing our students they can read outside of class and that it does not have to be something they have to do for a large amount of time at once. Reading is important and I also think Miller does a great job so far at emphasizing the importance.