We are a group of 5th grade teachers who are reading and blogging together. Thanks so much for joining us as we read and discuss Readicide. Please leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.

Chapter 3, Avoiding the Tsunami

Readicide Factor: The Over Analysis of Books Creates Instruction That Values the Trivial at the Expense of the Meaningful.

Wow! Imagine that. Great teachers are contributing to readicide! Here’s the recipe:

The Kill-a-Reader Casserole

*Take one large Novel. Dice into as many pieces as possible.

*Douse with sticky notes.

*Remove book from the oven every 5 minutes and insert worksheets

*Add more sticky notes

*Baste until novel is unrecognizable, far beyond well done.

*Serve in choppy bite-size chunks.

Yes, I am guilty. But over the years I have adjusted and found a balance. I changed the way I was teaching because the students did not like reading novel. What? How come? I was teaching the novel the same way I was taught when I was in middle school and high school. Insert “Ah Ha” moment. I hated every single novel I read in school. Why? Because the teachers used the above recipe.

Now I do more pre-reading activities to cover things like vocab, dialect, and any background knowledge that the students need. I use the first couple of chapters to work on the basics of character, setting, theme, cause & effect, etc, etc. and then we read. Yes we do sometimes stop and discuss and I might throw in a fun activity, but most of the activities take place after we have read the book. We sometimes go back and reread a section or page. But I am not disrupting the flow. My students really love the novels now (even the ones I hated as a child).

As we discuss the novels the class somehow always hits on the value of each novel on their own. I am always ready to steer them in a certain direction but rarely need to. As an example we read Sign of the Beaver, the class will bring up the differences in culture and how the Native Americans were treated. I have never needed to bring that up. So by letting them read and enjoy the book it seems that they are able to pick out the valuable lessons. As an educator you know I am bursting with pride when this happens.

Now what do you do with all of the huge, super comprehensive novel study unit that you bought? Total waste of money? No, I still use them. Not every piece every year and I use them in the beginning and at the end. The middle is for reading. I find that we use different worksheets and activities each year. I know my class, what they need, and what will they enjoy? Different groups just need different things. So even though I do not use the whole unit over the course of time I have used most pieces.

Hop on over to The Big Kids Hall and see what she has to say about Readicide.

Interested in joining in? Here's our schedule. We'd love to know what you think.

Readicide

If this is your first visit to our hop, we are reading Kelly Gallagher's book Readicide. Take a peek at our thoughts and leave us a comment. I would love to hear from you.

Chapter 2, Endangered Minds

Kelly Gallagher made a couple of points in chapter two of Readicide that really hit home with me.

The Importance of Knowledge Capital.

According to Gallagher because our students are not reading a wide variety of texts their knowledge capital is very small. Today’s students do not know what is happening in this world. Gallagher’s example was al Qaeda. Remember the book was published in 2009. He had students who did not know what al Qaeda was.

Now you may not expect 5^th graders to understand al Qaeda, but exposing them to a wide variety of reading material will certainly help them improve their knowledge capital. But how do we expose them to the type of reading that adults do, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and websites? I really do not have the time to implement this into my class. And I am not sure what is appropriate for 5^th graders.

However a few years ago I started showing the news during our snack time.  We have a late lunch so the kiddos bring in a snack. We take 5 to 10 minutes to eat our snack and I turn on CNN Student News. The class really gets into this and when a good discussion develops we run with it, so it sometimes takes much longer than 10 minutes.  I am thrilled at how engaged they are and I always learn something.  I think this is a great age appropriate way to expose the class to current events and the rich vocabulary that accompanies it.

There is a Dearth of Interesting Reading Materials in our Schools.

Dearth? Not a word that I use every day, I even looked it up to make sure I had the correct meaning. It means lack.

So what is interesting to a 5^th grader? That is the question of the day. I do not think 5^th graders know what they love to read yet. I remember when I was in 5^th grade. Our school had just added a new library. My classmates were reading mysteries. I did not like mysteries. Yet today, I love mysteries. So as educators I think we need to expose our students to many different types of literature.

To help with this Gallagher recommends a book flood zone. Since I love garage sales adding material to my class library has been easy. My problem is finding room in the classroom for all the books. ;) 

Hop on over to The Big Kids' Hall and see what she has to say about Readicide.

Interested in joining in? Here's our schedule. We'd love to know what you think!

Readicide by Kelly Gallagher

OMG! I threw out morning work. I've never told anyone, I have not even said it out loud, but after reading Readicide, I know it was the right thing to do.

In the first chapter of Readicide, Kelly Gallagher talks about how standardized testing has effected reading in our schools, and the fact that the struggling readers are the most affected. I teach in a Title 1 school, those struggling readers are my students.

I wanted to read Readicide by Kelly Gallagher when it was published a few years ago. Instead readicide was happening in my life. I was changing my resources to incorporate the standards. My district was moving to a basil reading program, and test prep was all the buzz. So I spent the summer planning, creating resources and making test prep the focus. What happened? I hated it, and the students hated it. One student even said, “Where is the fun work and the centers.” Wow that hit home.

So I needed to regroup. Ugh, what to do? We were 3 weeks into school and everyone was stressed. I needed to make a change and the sooner the better. We had a class meeting, what the students were communicating to me was they hated reading the same the stories in the basil program over and over again and they hated the worksheets.  So what could I change? I was pulling worksheets from the reading program as morning work. OK, I could change that.

I quickly decided to throw out morning work. We would use the time to read novels. I had packed away novels, you know, the novels that we were getting rid of because now we had this great new reading program. But they were packed away. I wanted to start now! So I decided to let the students have a free read time. They could pick any book they wanted and read. Just read, recreational reading, no work sheets, no test, no book reports. It would give me time to regroup.

This has really worked for me. We change our book every month. I still use free read, but I also have the class reading the same book. We have our special rotation, art, music, PE, etc., first thing in the morning. We have 15 minutes before they leave for their special rotation. One day a week we have 45 minutes. It is on this day that we discuss the book we are reading. We do some of the fun activities to go along with the book. When we have free read, students can share what they are reading or I conference with them. I love these conferences. I learn so much. 

Here is a fun book your students might like:

Hop on over to The Big Kids' Hall for more insight on Readicide

It's coming!

Join us June 17th. We will share what we have learned from reading Readicide. You might pick up a few tips. See you then.