Anyway...The way I teach reading now is a combo of "let's read for fun" (free reading for 1/2 of the period on Mondays and Fridays, no questions asked) and more structured activities (context clues work for new vocab, study of prefixes/roots, timed reading, read alouds, notetaking, highlighting, pulling out quotes from novels, graphic organizers, booktalks-- both presenting them myself and having students present them). I try to have a wide range of activities to make the students realize that one sole method does not work for everything. You have to adjust as a reader, according to what your current reading material is and your purpose for reading that material. I also realize that not every child will LOVE reading--- for those students, I try giving them the newspaper to read or even instructional texts (origami, sketching, etc).
As for how future technologies might affect how I teach reading, in the future the reading material for my class might be expanded beyond "conventional texts." Right now, some of our schools' texts are online (not for my class, but for some other courses). I know that the teaching of material from these texts will be affected by the online availability of these texts. Sometimes, I have students do Post-it note activities in their literature anthologies. If most of the future texts are online, reading will become less tactile. I guess I could still teach notetaking though; they'd just be taking notes from a computer screen. Notetaking methods will have to designed to be aligned with readers' habits of reading online (different eye movements instead of conventional left to right, going to different links and opening up different tabs, etc). If laptops are more readily available in classrooms (per student), students might complete comprehension activities online (blogging in response to text, completing online quizzes with instantaneous responses, etc).
Overall, I know that technology will impact how I teach reading but at this point in time, my mindset is just that I will be "getting to the same ends but by different means." Whether or not this proves to be true, I guess I will find out. I can definitely say that I don't think I will be replaced by a robot or anything extreme like that...yet.
1 comment:
I also teach reading through "let's read for fun." I allow my students to read everyday for about 10 to 15 minutes anything they choose. I hope it works. My biggest problem with that, is I am unable to discuss what they are reading. I have only read so many books in my library. I can't discuss them all. My students need opportunities for discussion and this reading for fun does not provide that for them.
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