Pam Cole really hit home for me throughout the readings. I remember in 10th grad taking a novels class. I was really excited for it to start because I liked to read various types of books, but when the class started I had a hard time connecting with the teacher, my peers, and the books. I stopped reading almost immediately after the class started because I did not understand what was going on in the book(s). I also didn't like how she had us show what we had read... through quizzes & tests. I remember class mostly consisting of me reading for about 1/3rd of the time & taking some sort of lame quiz.
At about the same time as that novels class I stopped reading & never really got back on track with it until recently. It's hard for me to really put my finger on it. I think I was afraid of getting different information out of any sort of text then what someone else got. I now realize that we all take different meanings out of texts depending upon the mood we are in we are reading, and why we are reading a particular text (like for a class or enjoyment). There are some books I have read several times and every time I notice something different that wasn't there before.
In any case I found Cole's suggestions and facts very useful!
I think that daily reading quizzes are a big part of the reason that people think that they "hate" English and/or reading. Your experience is all too common. I hated reading quizzes too; I had always done the reading but my memory for details isn't very good so I struggled to remember the small, irrelevant things that the teacher insisted on testing us over.
ReplyDeleteMmm-hmm. The reading quizzes, when done the standard way, set this idea up that we all need to get the same ideas from reading. More open-ended questions and not every day would help students think about what they were reading, without feeling pressured to think a certain way.
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