{"id":1343,"date":"2006-09-06T00:17:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-06T00:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=1343"},"modified":"2014-10-01T03:41:23","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T03:41:23","slug":"new-semester-new-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=1343","title":{"rendered":"New semester, new book"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> The Fall semester at the community college where I teach at night starts this Thursday. I teach the second of two courses in college reading and study skills that is a requirement for those students who are not reading at college-level. Many of my students are straight out of high school, some are *returning students*, some are English as a Second Language students, some have learning disabilities. Most are reading at about the 4th grade level when they enter college.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, you read that last bit correctly. Reading at a 4th grade level in college.<\/span><\/p>\n

I love teaching beginning readers. They are bright-eyed and excited. Their whole reading life is ahead of them and they are eager to figure out the puzzle that is reading. This does not describe my students at the college.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of them have been humiliated by their inability or ignored. They hate reading and they hate books. They hate that they have to take this class (for no credit) before they can take the classes they really want to take. Many of them hate school and are only there to prove as much to me and to their parents who force them to go.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because I teach the second course in the series, the students know the drill and know what to expect. They’ve worked hard in the previous course (some have had to repeat it once or twice before passing) and are just beginning to see the result of their efforts. <\/span><\/p>\n

Understand that these kids can read. They can decode the words on the page. They just can’t make any sense out of the words and sentences and paragraphs that are in front of them. They have to be taught how to make meaning from what they read. So in the first course they are taught what good readers do, explicitly. What you and I do naturally. They work on improving their vocabulary and increasing their reading speed. They learn how to find the main idea. They learn how to organize information into memorable chunks, etc. etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then I get them and we work on applying these hard-won strategies to college-level reading material. We work on how to distinguish between fact and opinion. We work on inference and tone. We learn how to take lecture notes, how to annotate and outline, how to study for a test, how to write an essay. How to be a good student.<\/span><\/p>\n

I try to make time to fit a novel into the course. I think it’s important they learn that reading is something that good readers do for pleasure and not just because they *have to*. Ideally, I would let them each chose a novel to read, but I’ve learned that they need guidance even to find what they might enjoy.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the past I’ve used The Kite Runner and found that most of my students were able to enjoy it and understand it with a lot of guidance and class discussion. This semester, I’ve decided to to try a *hi-low* book – a high interest, low level book that shouldn’t necessitate so much explanation and chapter-by-chapter analysis on my part. The Five People You Meet in Heaven<\/a> by Mitch Albom was suggested and I’ve decided to give it a try.<\/span><\/p>\n

I read it a few years ago and thought it was a fun read. I hope that this group of students will find it enjoyable and that they’ll find something in it to make them think and want to talk about what they’ve read. Like good readers do.<\/span><\/p>\n

Have you read it? What did it make you think about? What did it make you want to talk about?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fall semester at the community college where I teach at night starts this Thursday. I teach the second of two courses in college reading and study skills that is a requirement for those students who are not reading at college-level. Many of my students are straight out of high school, some are *returning students*, … Continue reading New semester, new book<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}