Reading 1: “Reading and Writing are Not Connected” by Ellen C. Carillo
Reading 2: “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X
Choice: I decided that I wanted to read “Learning to Read” because I have heard about Malcolm X before, but I actually didn’t know anything about him prior to reading this essay, so I was curious about who he was.
Summaries: Both of these essays are about the importance of reading. In “Reading and Writing are Not Connected,” Carillo argues that in secondary education reading is not given enough emphasis. She claims that reading and writing need to be taught at the same time in order to improve students’ literacy skills. In “Learning to Read” Malcolm X talks about his transition into becoming an avid reader, and he discusses his motivation for reading. He talks about the whitewashing of history and how he now reads in order to access information to help the black man.
Prompt 2: I definitely agree with Carillo that reading needs to be given a greater focus in secondary education. She state that as educators, “[...] we must ask ourselves: how might we better integrate attention to both reading and writing in order to enrich the literacy education we are providing” (Carillo, 41)? As a secondary English education major, I initially did not think that I may have students in my classroom who don’t know how to read, but I now know that this is certainly a possibility, and I know that I can’t expect good writing from students who can’t read. In order to establish a community of writers I know that I must also establish a community of readers, and I think that this encompasses engaging students in reading and also teaching them some reading techniques. Malcolm X describes his interest in reading by stating that, “No university would ask any student to devour literature as I did when this new world opened to me, of being able to read and understand” (109). When considering how to engage students in reading, both of these essays really made me think of ways in which I can get students more excited about reading and how I can help them to improve upon their reading skills. Unlike Malcolm X, I think most kids would be appalled if I asked them to copy pages from the dictionary, but I hope I can help them to discover a love for reading. I think that the best ways I could get students engaged in reading is by helping them to select texts that are relevant to them, possibly from my classroom library where I will know the selection well enough to make recommendations, and through the use of multicultural education for texts the whole class has to read. I want students to be able to relate to what they are reading and be able to apply it to their lives outside of school.
In relation to reading techniques, one technique that I was thinking of from my teaching reading class last year is the idea of a read aloud. The ability to hear voices is something that I think is incredibly important in reading, but how do we teach this to kids? Read-alouds! These are something that can be modeled for students and they can show students how they should be able to hear what is happening as they read by interrupting their reading in order to check for understanding. Also, I think I could take the time to model how visualization works because I know that as a student I was never really taught how I could use visualization to interpret meaning, but once I understood how to visualize this technique helped me immensely when it was time to read nonfiction texts, such as text books.
Prompt 3: In “Reading and Writing are Not Connected,” Carillo mentions that one way teachers can connect reading and writing is by having students read as a writer. She describes this process by saying, “[...] readers notice the choices a writer has made and understands the relevance of those choices to their own writing” (Carillo, 42). One example that I thought of that enabled me to better understand this concept is the use of mentor texts. I feel like using mentor texts is something English education majors have been doing in both this class and ENGL 324 as we wrote our exploratory essays and memoirs. The purpose of a mentor text is to basically serve as an example of how students may decide to write an assignment. I know that the essays we read in this class as we worked on our exploratory essays helped me to evaluate the different writing choices the authors of these mentor texts were making and how I could possibly encompass these choices in my own writing if I desired. We also did this in 324 as we began writing our memoirs. Reading mentor texts helped me to understand how I could create zoom-in scenes or condense time in my own writing.
コメント