For reading in any course to matter as much as it can, the students have to 1) do the reading, and 2) do the reading actively, with care (e.g., asking questions, looking up new terms, taking notes). Many teachers — myself included — encounter a few common situations in which kids don’t naturally do this […]
Reading
Latin Word Chunks: A Case Study in Smart, Low-Stress Knowledge-Building
If you’ve bought into the idea that knowledge matters — that people can’t really think critically or read well or even learn things without knowing stuff — then you’re where I am. The whole skills vs. knowledge debate is a distraction built on a false premise. So now what? I’ve been wrestling with the Now what? for a lot of the summer. Knowledge-building has a chapter in […]
The Goal of Reading (and Basic Strategies for Achieving It)
A pivotal point in a reader’s journey is when she realizes, either intuitively or explicitly, that the goal of reading is to obtain meaning. If we’re not gaining meaning in a novel or a textbook or an article, then we’re not really reading. You’ve not read something until you’ve understood it. When our students reach […]
Purposeful & Active “Reading to Learn”
I can’t get the image of the nursing professor out of my head. I was at Davenport University in a panel session for professors there, and I was representing high school education. During the Q & A, this professor in the nursing program stood up and asked the following questions: “Why can’t students teach themselves […]
A Non-Freaked Out Approach to Reading like a Professional
Last time, I shared how to read (and enjoy) more books this year; this time, I’d like to share my own simple rules for reading. I guess you could say this is how I avoid freaking out about the discrepancy between how many things there are that I want to read and how little time I […]