Emms Chapter 8 Reflection

I started this chapter thinking "oh great, more on 'Why should we read this book?'" I know that being an English teacher and getting your students to read for class is going to be something that we all are going to have to deal with. However I could not help but think of how when I was in H.S. I don't remember asking this question, or hearing one of my classmates ask why we were reading. I guess I never asked because reading the book was something that we were just supposed to do, it was assigned and it was for a grade. I never really stopped to ask what the bigger importance was for reading a particular book. The "questions" that "students think" that Gallagher give his readers on page 157 give more example of questions that I never heard and never thought, at least to my recollection. This lead me to think "Well, did I receive a quality education?" Was my education worth while and reflective like Gallagher was trying to get across?

After getting a couple of pages into the chapter, I started seeing and reading things that I liked.
On page 152, I like his list of key literary questions that he gives when dealing with certain literary aspects. 153 - "If there is real craft involved in the writing and this craft can be made visible to the students, their commitment to reading the work intensifies." I really like this quote. It reminds me of something I see every day walking back and forth to class. I pass through the Phelps Grove School parking lot. There is a classroom that is on that side of the building and in the window there is this block that has something along the lines of "Tell me and will forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I will always remember." This activity that he gives us here and the ones later on in the chapter are student involvement, meaning that they will always remember what it is that they learned with those activities. Those activities that I liked and will probably use in my classroom are: The Most Valuable Idea, Theme Notebooks, Casting Call (but with the baseball card take), and Anchor Questions (I love the list that he gives us).