This stream in my Reading Rockets’ feed caught my attention today:
Sound It Out
Monitoring self-monitoring
“Begged questions:”
- What makes this little girl work so darn hard? What is motivating her? What inner voice propels her forward, and hopefully isn’t an “inner critic,” but a positive, encouraging voice?
- The author’s last question: What do you do to help a child monitor their comprehension while developing their fluency at the same time? is truly an essential question, too; but finally, before that can be answered, think about:
- Where is it asked, “why bother reading anyway?”
I have no issues or concerns with the author or article. What I’m digging into is this: why read at all?
When I pose this to students, I can gauge their level of maturity in their responses:
Immature: Because the teacher made me.
Mature: “Oh, Mrs. Love, The Hunger Games is SO GOOD – I read it all weekend and couldn’t put it down (this comes from both girls and boys). Do you have the next book? The next book? The next book?
I worked as a barista at a well-known world-dominating coffee establishment while I was working on my master’s. The cash register went to a symbol system, with codes, etc., and most instructions for the layout of the shop were “idiot proof.”
Be cautious, people: are we making the world so ‘idiot proof” that we marginalize ourselves even further.
I”ll just keep talking away – telling students that everything, and I mean darn near everything, is improved in my life because of my rich reading life: food, experiences, travel, time with family, conversations, know-how, confidence, friendships, choices, and any social interaction, writing, creating, crafting, developing, and breathing – it’s all better.
Perhaps I just answered my own question.