Chapter 9

You guys probably think I am nerd for doing my blog so early, but I have so much other stuff to do over Spring Break, I just wanted to make sure that I got it done. I felt like I really identified with what Gallagher's message was in Chapter 9. The questions that he poses at the end of the chapter on page 196 really got my mind going. "Do you believe our students are graduating adequately prepared to read the world at a deeper level?" "What will happen to students who leave school unprepared for the literacy challenges that lie outside the curriculum?" "What is more important ten years from now: our student's remembering the key literary elements in The Great Gatsby, or our students being able to make sense of a ballot initiative?" I want to do my in-class lesson about deeper reading, so this got me thinking about what I would say. I like how he provided some real life instances and incorporated them into the classroom. I especially liked the "Real-world Euphemisms" that he used on page 169-170. It was fun for the students, but it also got them discussing what it meant and how English is incorporated into the real world. On page 181, he also talks about a project he did where he had his students turn in interesting real life newspaper articles. He treated his students to lunch if they submitted the best articles, and i thought that was really cool. The students used deeper reading to find interesting articles, and then got rewarded with food. Can't get much better than that.