The Remarkable Discovery of Student Reading...

For a grade: Blog due September 2, 2013.

As I look forward for the semester, I have come to a remarkable discovery. My CT and I played a “game” in class with the students on the first couple of days. We used “take off, touch down” to get to know the students a bit better. The idea of the game was to just get to know basic information about our students; however, we started asking questions that were a little more involved for our students. Unfortunately, within our game, we noticed that most of our students had not actually read a book since they were assigned a book in the fourth grade! We had asked our students to “take off” if they had read a book over the summer, three stood up. So we extended our question, we asked them to “take off” if they had read a book in the last year. We had only two more students join the three standing.

 My CT and I decided to use another closing to find out when the rest of the class had actually completed a novel. The next day, we had the students do a “whip around” by telling everyone in the class what the last book they had read.  My CT and I were both dumbfounded as to how our students had made it from the fourth grade to the eighth grade without actually reading a book. We do know that some of the students were joking when they told us that the last book they had read was “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” but there were atleast a handful of students that honestly and openly admitted that they had not actually read books in a “couple of years.”

Within the first pages of our reading for the week, Bomer discusses how we engage student reading and interaction within the class. Bomer notes that “literature activity situated within students’ relationships, spaces, and interests outside their English class-but supported by it. The students are highly engaged in what they are doing…” (Bomer, 2011, p. 3). I am wondering what would be some of the ways to “engage” our students in their reading. Their school has a book campaign requirement for them already, but most students do not strive to meet that goal. My CT also has it listed in her syllabus that the students must read “every night” as part of their homework.

 I do not believe that all of the students will be motivated to read outside of school. I was hoping to integrate activities within the classroom to motivate the students to read more. I am at a loss of ideas on how to get the students to read. I have been able to get previous students to read by having students “find” something that would engage them, i.e. magazine articles, non-fiction books on sports, etc. It is difficult to get students to read books for class when the books that are assigned to read are not something that they would typically read.

How do I, as a future teacher, get my students to read more? I want my students to be able to engage in the learning process and find something that they enjoy reading. I know that most of my students will enjoy reading as much as I do, but I do want my students to be able to enjoy reading. I want my students to read, read anything. I want them to find something that they can engage themselves into reading. This is my challenge for the year. I want to get the majority of my classes reading outside of school. My  ideal goal is 100% of the students, but I know that not all of my students will read outside of school.