Going against the grain here a little, I don’t like required reading in schools.
I really loved reading growing up, always had a book (sometimes more than one) that I was reading, read well above my grade level, chose books that challenged myself, etc.
My high school really pushed reading, lots of classes assigned books for us to read, I think even some of the math classes had novels they were supposed to read. For our homeroom period once a week we had to do mandatory SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) where we had to be reading something, we couldn’t do homework or go see our teachers for help, or anything of the sort, we had to be seated at our desks reading silently. I often was juggling 2 or 3 assigned books along with my other school work, activities, and hobbies, which didn’t really leave me much time for the books that I chose to read for myself.
And the pacing was terrible, we’d often spend weeks on a book, analyzing it to death, doing packets of worksheets, writing reports, doing that accursed “popcorn reading” in class, etc. for books that I could have read in a matter of days if not hours.
I think we spent nearly a month on Of Mice and Men, it’s only around 100 pages, it can be read in an afternoon.
The whole experience really killed my love of reading. I resented a lot of the books I was made to read, and now almost 2 decades later I’ve never quite been able to get back into the same kind of reading habit I used to have.
I’ve made an effort since then to go back and reread some of those assigned books I hated back in school, and the wild thing is that, overall, they were really good books, strong stories, well-written, solid lessons to teach, different points of view to consider, etc. I totally understand why they were assigned reading.
But when I first read them I was just going through the motions, I just wanted to get the damn books out of the way so that I could read what I wanted to read.
And I think the key is to make kids want to seek out those books. Don’t assign them 1984 (for example,) make them want to go out and read 1984 for themselves.
I don’t know what the best way to do that is, but it’s not just telling them to read those books. If anything, it might be telling them not to read them. I can only speak for myself, but I know that personally seeing a display on “banned books” at a book store or library always made me way more interested in those books than any amount of recommendations from friends or reviews online or any other form of marketing.
So how do you study literature without having the class all read the same book? Can’t really have a discussion on the themes of a work if the class isn’t all reading the same thing.
This is important. My first solution reading the comment was to just focus on number of books and let the kids pick their own to get the love of reading. However this would be very difficult for a teacher to maintain if they wanted to do any analysis.
So maybe have a short list of a variety of books, and the material could be prepared to discuss themes. Maybe also having students present/teach others what they learned?
There would have to be one or two books at least in a year that were an assigned read for the whole class to get deeper into the text.
I happened to enjoy most of the assigned books. I’d have the same issue in class with the amount of time given on each book, but I’d use it to my advantage. I’d usually just read each book twice on my own, chill out and more or less slack off while in class, and still answer any questions or do the work better than anyone else because I knew the subject matter better than any other students. I’d ready something like the oddesey a couple times over a weekend and then have a month where I didn’t have to use any effort at all in that class.
I give my grandma props to my reading. I went over to Grandma and Grandpa’s a lot and from the age of like 1 she would read me childrens picture books. Many times I’d ask for the same one again and again and shed lovingly read it to me. I could follow along looking at the words (she’d point with her finger at each word as she read) long before I learned sounds each letter would make. I could just recognize a word by what the word looked like in the book. I could read at a 5th grade level in first grade, and by 5th grade I tested out to its max of 12+.
Totally fair experience. I was also a voracious reader growing up and hated assigned reading. But I certainly wasn’t required to read as much as you! In fact, one of the things I hated about the classroom reading is I would have to stop reading the book (if I enjoyed it) and wait to discuss or do worksheets on it when all I wanted is to just continue reading it!
But what we have to remember is there’s kids out there from families that don’t encourage reading. Or even ones that actively discourage reading! If not for assigned reading, they might never read a single book from their adolescence onward! At least this way, they actually get the knowledge from a few books in them. But really, I don’t know what the answer is either…
Going against the grain here a little, I don’t like required reading in schools.
I really loved reading growing up, always had a book (sometimes more than one) that I was reading, read well above my grade level, chose books that challenged myself, etc.
My high school really pushed reading, lots of classes assigned books for us to read, I think even some of the math classes had novels they were supposed to read. For our homeroom period once a week we had to do mandatory SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) where we had to be reading something, we couldn’t do homework or go see our teachers for help, or anything of the sort, we had to be seated at our desks reading silently. I often was juggling 2 or 3 assigned books along with my other school work, activities, and hobbies, which didn’t really leave me much time for the books that I chose to read for myself.
And the pacing was terrible, we’d often spend weeks on a book, analyzing it to death, doing packets of worksheets, writing reports, doing that accursed “popcorn reading” in class, etc. for books that I could have read in a matter of days if not hours.
I think we spent nearly a month on Of Mice and Men, it’s only around 100 pages, it can be read in an afternoon.
The whole experience really killed my love of reading. I resented a lot of the books I was made to read, and now almost 2 decades later I’ve never quite been able to get back into the same kind of reading habit I used to have.
I’ve made an effort since then to go back and reread some of those assigned books I hated back in school, and the wild thing is that, overall, they were really good books, strong stories, well-written, solid lessons to teach, different points of view to consider, etc. I totally understand why they were assigned reading.
But when I first read them I was just going through the motions, I just wanted to get the damn books out of the way so that I could read what I wanted to read.
And I think the key is to make kids want to seek out those books. Don’t assign them 1984 (for example,) make them want to go out and read 1984 for themselves.
I don’t know what the best way to do that is, but it’s not just telling them to read those books. If anything, it might be telling them not to read them. I can only speak for myself, but I know that personally seeing a display on “banned books” at a book store or library always made me way more interested in those books than any amount of recommendations from friends or reviews online or any other form of marketing.
So how do you study literature without having the class all read the same book? Can’t really have a discussion on the themes of a work if the class isn’t all reading the same thing.
This is important. My first solution reading the comment was to just focus on number of books and let the kids pick their own to get the love of reading. However this would be very difficult for a teacher to maintain if they wanted to do any analysis.
So maybe have a short list of a variety of books, and the material could be prepared to discuss themes. Maybe also having students present/teach others what they learned?
There would have to be one or two books at least in a year that were an assigned read for the whole class to get deeper into the text.
I happened to enjoy most of the assigned books. I’d have the same issue in class with the amount of time given on each book, but I’d use it to my advantage. I’d usually just read each book twice on my own, chill out and more or less slack off while in class, and still answer any questions or do the work better than anyone else because I knew the subject matter better than any other students. I’d ready something like the oddesey a couple times over a weekend and then have a month where I didn’t have to use any effort at all in that class.
I give my grandma props to my reading. I went over to Grandma and Grandpa’s a lot and from the age of like 1 she would read me childrens picture books. Many times I’d ask for the same one again and again and shed lovingly read it to me. I could follow along looking at the words (she’d point with her finger at each word as she read) long before I learned sounds each letter would make. I could just recognize a word by what the word looked like in the book. I could read at a 5th grade level in first grade, and by 5th grade I tested out to its max of 12+.
Thanks, Grandma. Miss you.
Reading might actually be bad for you. The psychic equivalent of footbinding. Leaves you deformed and incapable of seeing leprechauns.
Totally fair experience. I was also a voracious reader growing up and hated assigned reading. But I certainly wasn’t required to read as much as you! In fact, one of the things I hated about the classroom reading is I would have to stop reading the book (if I enjoyed it) and wait to discuss or do worksheets on it when all I wanted is to just continue reading it!
But what we have to remember is there’s kids out there from families that don’t encourage reading. Or even ones that actively discourage reading! If not for assigned reading, they might never read a single book from their adolescence onward! At least this way, they actually get the knowledge from a few books in them. But really, I don’t know what the answer is either…