Chapter 4 Discussion

Like I have said before, I believe that if we as educators want to be successful in teaching our students to read, we must take initiative in our classrooms and find out about our students’ backgrounds and their interests. However, like the chapter discusses, we also must show interest in their reading and find ways to incorporate the readings in the classroom other than just simply reading the story and leaving it as is. If this was the case, the students would just read the information and not know the relevance of the information being taught in the story and they will soon remember nothing from the story. The information would be short term and therefore, pointless. We need to encourage further exploration of the topics and educate them as to the importance of what they are reading.

The response of the reading to the students is a way for the students to review and a way for the teacher to make sure that all of her students comprehend what they are reading. Having the students give a short little response to what was read or discussed in the class that day would be a great way to see how different students respond to different texts, especially on controversial issues and multicultural books. Some students will find interests in some areas of the reading and feel an emotional pull from it, while others take interest to another part.

Rosenblatt also expresses that it is important that the teacher gives breaks during the reading time to review, explain, or predict the outcome of the story. This way, the students are readily on task with the reading while not being burnt out completely on taking in all the information. It gives them a little break while retaining the information that they have learned. It is very beneficial to them to stop and review on what they had read so that the instructor makes sure that everyone in the classroom is caught up and understands what is happening. Prediction of upcoming events in the book is a great way to get the students to use an upper level of thinking. I remember when I was in the fourth grade, every reading that we read in that class we did some kind of prediction on the outcome of the story. She would have us predict what we thought would be the ending to the story, come together as a class and act out what we thought would happen, or write what we wanted to happen in the end. I loved doing this in class because I got to hear about what all the other students in the class were thinking was going to happen and consider those outcomes as well.

After the students have completed the reading, there are still activities that can be done to enhance the learning and reasoning from the reading. They could review with their peers of what they have read or other activities. One of my favorite times in my English classes was the times that the teachers allowed us to create our own endings to the story. This was especially beneficial if we didn’t like the ending outcome of the story. It gave us a chance to express our creativity and enhance our understanding of their understanding. Expressing creativity could be fun for the students, thus furthering their interest in reading in and outside of work.

There are many activities other than the reading that can help the students get a better understanding of the reading. There are many ways to incorporate these into your classroom, such as reading, writing, creating literature response journals, literature models, dictated response, and book responses. These give the students the opportunity to further explore the reading and bring up any questions, concerns, or opinions about the reading. Also, there are oral practices that the students can contribute to the classroom about the readings. The students can create their own songs, lyrics, chants, conduct debates, and other oral responses in the classroom. This could be a fun outlet for the students to share their interpretations of the reading so that they can compare them to other’s opinions and take their opinions into account.