Readicide Blog Hop - Chapter 4

Howdy!  Welcome back to another week of our Readicide book study.  This week was my favorite chapter in the book thus far.  We are learning about excellent strategies for preventing readicide with academic text...one of the greatest struggles I have in my classroom.  Take a look at some of these terrific techniques Gallagher suggests we implement. 

When providing your readers an academic text, it is helpful to frame the text with a purpose.  By explicitly telling your readers what they should be looking for as they read, it will give them a targeted purpose, resulting in stronger comprehension.  Some excellent strategies to use include reviewing difficult vocabulary, holding a discussion as to why students are reading the text, and providing readers with the final essay question, just to name a few.  Each of these techniques help students become engaged with the text prior to even reading.  As Gallagher states, what we do prior to students reading difficult text is paramount.

Academic texts are far too challenging to read just one time, we need to offer students opportunities for reading the text more than once.  The second and third draft readings are chances for students to dig deeper and deeper into the text each time they read.  However, do not use this technique for every single chapter in the book...this will lead to readicide.  Strategically pick and choose which sections are important to read more than once.

This technique was my favorite covered in this chapter.  Gallagher frames out a large piece of text for his students, perhaps a chapter for homework.  Then, the next day in class, students share their thoughts on the reading, and together, as a class, they move into a close read with a small chunk of text.  The big chunk/little chunk approach to reading does two things: 1) the big chunk allows students to get into the reading flow and 2) the little chunk helps students hone their analytical skills.

As an experienced adult reader, what strategies do you use when text becomes challenging?  I loved this section of the chapter because it caused me to have one of those "ah-ha!" moments.  When I read something that doesn't make sense, I pause, slow down, reread, look for context clues, tap into my prior knowledge, make text connections, etc. etc.  However, when I think of my students, they don't use any of these strategies.  Without over teaching, because as we learned in the last chapter, that is a recipe for readicide, we have to teach students about their metacognition.  Gallagher uses a reader's notebook and teaches his students about smart reading strategies over an extended period of time.  By strategically teaching students about smart reading techniques...we prevent overwhelming them with too much information, thus decreasing the chances of readicide occurring.

Well, we are almost done with our readicide journey.  Head on over to Kim's blog to find out what she is saying about this week's chapter.

 Just one more week left with this book study!  Don't be sure to miss our last topic next Tuesday at 9.

Happy Teaching,