Readicide

Some of the problems pointed to in the book were problems we have been made aware of in the past. The biggest example of this is the problem of teaching students to a test. While I had known before about the negative effect this has on students, I did not know about the impact it was having on reading. Most of all, I did not know that students were being denied interesting reading materials because of the focus on tests. I noticed standardized testing having other negative effects when I was in school, but I never noticed a lack of interesting books in English class as a result of that. I found it interesting that the book recommended using books that were "authentic". In this case, that meant books that were applicable to things going on in the real world, things that would have an impact in some way on the student's lives. This goes back to our discussion of the requirements of the TPA in class last Monday, when we talked about how to connect students to their community. It is good to see that there is a way to do this that will also improve their skills as readers at the same time.

I also found it interesting that students are being denied novels in favor of shorter materials because it helps in test preparation while not necessarily preparing them as actual readers. This was something that I did notice while I was in school. Many teachers did not want to bother with whole novels, often telling us that we just didn't have the time, and opting for shorter works that could be printed out. Novels were saved mostly for the AP English classes, which always sounded more interesting to me than our regular English classes. I found it interesting that solutions in the book often centered around teachers taking extra initiative to bring better reading materials to their students. The focus on reading skills also seemed in line with the CCSS.