readicide
DESCRIPTION
In an open discussion format, participants will gain valuable insights gleaned from Kelly Gallagher’s acclaimed book, Readicide. Are we killing reading in public schools? If so, how? What can we as educators do about it? How do we get students motivated and interested in reading? Come for this important reflective discussion about the current reality of reading in our schools and how we have the power to initiate change and support students to help them become readers.TRANSCRIPT
Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It
Book by: Kelly Gallagher, 2009, Stenhouse PublishersDiscussion Facilitator: Dr. Lynn Warren
Slides are excerpts from the book for discussion only.
Kelly Gallagher
• 22 years as a classroom teacher• Teaches English in an urban high school, most
recently New York inner city• Addresses “the systematic killing of the love of
reading often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools”
• Intentions are not the problem, practices are
Our Questions
• Are we contributing to Readicide? If yes, how are we causing it?
• How do we end Readicide?
AliteracyQuotes from Readicide
• Ray Bradbury“You do not have to burn books to destroy
culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
• Reading At Risk study from 2004 found that 54% of adults were nonliterary text readers.
Test Preparation Issues and Reading
• Drives shallow teaching and learning
• Keeps struggling readers struggling and in “magic pill” reading programs
• “Apartheid” schools—less than 14% of low income students are reading at grade level
• Too many standards—teachers are in a hard place
• School culture valuing developing test takers over developing readers
From Readicide
The Kill-a-Reader Casserole (Overteaching with the Chop Chop Curriculum)
• Take one large novel. Dice it into as many pieces as possible.
• Douse with sticky notes.• Remove book from oven every five minutes and
insert worksheets.• Add more sticky notes.• Baste until novel is unrecognizable, far beyond
well done.• Serve in choppy bite-size chunks. (page 73, Readicide)
The Kill-a-Reader Casserole (underteaching)
Role of Recreational Reading
• What is it? Why is it important? What are we doing to promote free voluntary reading? How much of this kind of reading should students be doing?
• NAEP study: Students who read out of school for fun almost everyday scored higher than students who read once or twice a week who scored higher than those who read only once or twice a month who scored higher than those who hardly ever read for fun outside of school. EdResearch.info Quote from Readicide
How do you find the “Sweet Spot” of Instruction?
• Students need the proper level of instructional support without abandoning or drowning them. What is the right balance of help?
Reading Materials and Time to Read
• Do students have lots of interesting reading material to choose from—”a book flood?”
• How much time are students given to read in school?
• How do reward reading programs affect readers?
Are we fixing the wrong things?
• What do we do to prevent Readicide?
In today’s data-happy era of accountability, testing and No Child Left Behind, here is the most astonishing statistic in the whole field of education: an increasing number of researchers are saying that nearly 1 out of 3 public high school students won’t graduate…For Latinos and African Americans, the rate approaches an alarming 50%. Virtually no community , small or large, rural or urban, has escaped the problem.” (Thornburgh 2006 in Time Magazine “Dropout Nation” quoted in Readicide)
What we can do to prevent Readicide