What’s your opinion on audio books? As an adult I love listening to audio books while walking. I wonder how that would translate to a classroom where students go outside and walk while listening to books and come back for a group discussion, Socratic seminar? I was a high school teacher for 4 years, movement was always a part of lessons, like getting out of your seat to read and take notes that were on the walls around the room. I feel like so much of the education model is adults telling kids to sit down and listen to someone tell them what’s important and what they need to know to graduate.
If people/students can comprehend audiobooks and remember what they heard, then yes, I’m in favor of them. For me, that’s not my learning style. I’ve tried and I don’t absorb anything from audiobooks. I like to keep tabs on lines I like with sticky notes so audiobooks just don’t work for me. I also used to be a teacher, and I used the Socratic method as much as I could. It’s basically letting students guide the discussion and encouraging each other to be civil instead of, as you mentioned, teachers just telling students what’s important.
I’m so glad you didn’t just stop with the problem but laid out solutions, too! It really is as simple as a cultural shift to celebrate the rebellion of picking up a book and reading. And that can only happen when books are as easily within grasp as our phones!
I used to love it when my family got to go to Pizza Hut because I earned a personal pan pizza 🍕 from reading! 📖 I would have read anyway, but it was like we all won because of reading.
There are ways to gamify whole books, if kids (or adults) respond to gamification. Heck, I love watching my reading challenge grow on Goodreads as the year goes on and I don’t even care about gamification! I love the glories of stories! More, please!
I've been thinking about this topic (middle schools and high schools not assigning books) and all the articles like, "English majors at top schools like Yale can't read books!" Are they related?? If it's basically the first time you've been asked to read a book, and maybe one with *gasp* outdated language, it may in fact be hard! These students are not being prepared for college, so any high school that considers itself to be offering "college prep" courses needs to be assigning books.
But I've also been reading that teachers cannot GET students to read books, and some have resigned themselves to reading all texts aloud in class together to make sure it's done. That . . . is obviously a huge chunk of class time.
The real solution is probably getting parents to make their kids practice reading at home, but of course schools have no control over that.
Yes, having kids read books feels like a real challenge for sure, but I also believe in what the Ed Week article suggests. I think if we (collective we = parents, students, teachers, society) create the reading conditions, slowly but surely reading whole books could happen again. We gotta try, yeah?!!
What’s your opinion on audio books? As an adult I love listening to audio books while walking. I wonder how that would translate to a classroom where students go outside and walk while listening to books and come back for a group discussion, Socratic seminar? I was a high school teacher for 4 years, movement was always a part of lessons, like getting out of your seat to read and take notes that were on the walls around the room. I feel like so much of the education model is adults telling kids to sit down and listen to someone tell them what’s important and what they need to know to graduate.
If people/students can comprehend audiobooks and remember what they heard, then yes, I’m in favor of them. For me, that’s not my learning style. I’ve tried and I don’t absorb anything from audiobooks. I like to keep tabs on lines I like with sticky notes so audiobooks just don’t work for me. I also used to be a teacher, and I used the Socratic method as much as I could. It’s basically letting students guide the discussion and encouraging each other to be civil instead of, as you mentioned, teachers just telling students what’s important.
I’m so glad you didn’t just stop with the problem but laid out solutions, too! It really is as simple as a cultural shift to celebrate the rebellion of picking up a book and reading. And that can only happen when books are as easily within grasp as our phones!
Thanks! Yes, reading accessibility needs to happen!
I used to love it when my family got to go to Pizza Hut because I earned a personal pan pizza 🍕 from reading! 📖 I would have read anyway, but it was like we all won because of reading.
There are ways to gamify whole books, if kids (or adults) respond to gamification. Heck, I love watching my reading challenge grow on Goodreads as the year goes on and I don’t even care about gamification! I love the glories of stories! More, please!
Thank you for talking solutions. 💗📚
I've been thinking about this topic (middle schools and high schools not assigning books) and all the articles like, "English majors at top schools like Yale can't read books!" Are they related?? If it's basically the first time you've been asked to read a book, and maybe one with *gasp* outdated language, it may in fact be hard! These students are not being prepared for college, so any high school that considers itself to be offering "college prep" courses needs to be assigning books.
But I've also been reading that teachers cannot GET students to read books, and some have resigned themselves to reading all texts aloud in class together to make sure it's done. That . . . is obviously a huge chunk of class time.
The real solution is probably getting parents to make their kids practice reading at home, but of course schools have no control over that.
Yes, having kids read books feels like a real challenge for sure, but I also believe in what the Ed Week article suggests. I think if we (collective we = parents, students, teachers, society) create the reading conditions, slowly but surely reading whole books could happen again. We gotta try, yeah?!!