Let Them Read

As I started to read "You Gotta BE the Book" what really struck me was aesthetic reading. Here he talked about how he had not realized that students were just reading for information. This is how students become bored of the reading. We have been brought through high school skimming for useless information and not really required to read the actual story. It shocked me that teachers would not realize that is why students are not interested in reading on their own.

I did not enjoy reading because we had to read books that were just to get the information for filling out packets or basic questions. He journaled about one student who read for fun at home, experiencing the aesthetic side of reading. This is when they get to live through their reading and the stories. I wish that I had been taught in a different way to engage in the stories, much like young kids do. We grow up loving books and wanting to read more...maybe just to avoid going to bed, but even the girl he read to knew the story as if she was actually part of it... Then we stop doing this, and do more searching for information.

He then talks about how Rosenblatt never said specifically what strategies to use in engaging students with the reading. This has been a struggle for me as I read through books like this. They tell you what not to do, but not specifically what TO do. I share this frustration with him a lot! You go on to learning what works best for others and yourself in your own classroom. I plan to use his two big points: teaching with clarity of purpose and being more social in the classroom. They are vague, but reminds you that the students need to know what to get out of the reading and why they are doing it. It also helps them to engage with each other, giving them time to experience the reading with others and connecting to it. This way students can get much more out of the reading, "a need to learn relationally from characters, author, and experts through their transactions with various texts."

Here is a LINK that talks about why students are bored in class... This can connect with reading as well. It talks about sitting too long and the teacher talking too much- this can be avoided by using more social work in the classroom. It also talks about directing too much, and observing too little. This can also be a factor of why students aren't living through their reading- because teachers aren't giving them the space to be their own person and think their own thoughts.