The Pleasure Principle
When I was a child I despised reading. We were grouped into
red birds, blue birds, and yellow birds.
Yellow birds being the lowest. I
hated that I was in a low group and it was obvious. I actually did not begin to
like reading until after I graduated high school. Making sure that students become lifelong
readers is extremely important. We must do this as early as possible in order
to make a real difference in our student’s life. Our job as teachers, is to
make sure that reading is enjoyable and successful for our students. I feel
that allowing choice and time for independent reading is vital to our students.
Skills are demonstrated for students as a whole group and individually in my
classroom.
The more we practice the more we become comfortable with a
skill.
This article has helped remind me
that the first step in being successful as a teacher is to help my students
enjoy what I am teaching, get them interested, then ask them to perfect
reading.
Connecting content to your learners is a very important step in planning lessons. If they can't see why they are learning something, they won't take it seriously. I'm glad that these articles are making us as educators step back and take note of how the way we approach instruction is helping or hindering our learners. None of us want to make our kids hate to read but it's too easy to fall into the rote memorization component of reading instruction. I'm happy to see that you're reflecting on your own practice and taking the time to make sure your approaches are engaging students instead of turning them off.
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