What is Reddit's opinion of Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It?

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Wow. That's insane. You need to send copies of Kelly Gallagher's Readicide to your admin. Readicide/Kelly Gallagher

If you're looking for nonfiction, I thought Readicide by Kelly Gallagher was fantastic. It's about the death of reading in American schools. It's a quick read, but it's fascinating. It will change the way you think about reading, your own education, and your perception of what reading and education should be.

Sorry for the delay. Before I give recommendations, I should preface by saying this: Reading in English classes cannot be about the books. Reading in English classes must be about the readers.

Rigor revolves around the tasks and engagement with the novel, not the novel itself. Readability is a myth, and I would highly encourage your wife to read Kelly Gallagher's <em>Readicide</em>. Her kids love Tears of a Tiger, and they're actually reading it? GREAT By replacing it with a book that is more rigorous (by what standards?) you may kill off a love of reading for them. The book they don't read won't help.

That being said, I would recommend your wife to continue Tears of a Tiger, but follow it up with choice reading with similar themes. She could create a list of 6-10 titles, have students self-select their book of choice, and form book clubs in class. Also, what sort of assessments is she doing with the novel? She could introduce critical literary lenses, psychological lenses, etc. to make the content "rigorous." My students take children's books, and apply critical literary lenses and Kohlberg's theory of moral development - it's a critical thinking unit, and they understand and engage with the theories and the text in a deeper and richer way.

For book clubs, books like Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming, Wes Moore's The Other Wes Moore, Susan Kulkin's No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row, Jason Reynolds' *All American Boys (I lovingly refer to this book as a "gateway drug" - even my most reluctant readers will read this. In fact, any Jason Reynolds book will do that), Walter Dean Myers' Monsters, Jack Gantos' Hole in My Life, and many others. Then you're providing them not only diversity in forms of books, but also genre, and reading experience. She's done the hard work: finding a book they will read, and want to read. She needs to exploit that because she can now hook them into other books with similar characters, themes, and expand their reading diet.

I'm happy to message back and forth with your wife to get an idea of what she's hoping to accomplish with the novel unit, or collaborate on ideas. I'd even love to do a cross-country book club via Google Docs with her next year if she's interested! I cannot stress enough that Draper's Tears of a Tiger is a great read, and if her kids are connecting to it, I would just expand, and give them more options.

Hope this helps!

(Warning: I just read over this post a bit before I pressed "save" and I'm sorry for the forthcoming wall of text!)

The district that I teach in is a big proponent of the Depth and Complexity icons that were developed by Sandra Kaplan from USC. (I teach 7th grade ELA and HSS Honors in Southern California.) They can be used with any discipline — and really, ANY classroom [not just Honors] because it is just GOOD TEACHING — but I use them a lot with the subjects I teach (history and literature). If you do a Google search for the Depth and Complexity icons, or Depth and Complexity explained, you'll get a bit of an overview of each icon and some tips to incorporate it in literature. My favorite icons are Ethical Issues and Across the Disciplines. If you ever have the chance to go to a conference or anything where Sandra Kaplan is presenting, she's just awesome. She blows my mind. That is professional development that is truly worth my time.

Keep in mind that sometimes it won't require a lot on YOUR part, because the Honors students sometimes do a lot of differentiation themselves in terms of the questions they ask and class discussions you can have, compared to a non-Honors class. They provide the rigor! Sometimes, all I've asked is one, deep question and the lesson goes from there. I don't always have the same results in a non-Honors class. I highly suggest having a Socratic Seminar maybe once a quarter, and I like the Junior Great Books "Shared Inquiry Discussion" method for discussing literature. (See if your district will get you trained in that!) Oh oh oh, and look into doing literature circles? There are some great depth and complexity-infused literature circle "recording sheets" that you might be able to find and/or create. With an iPad, I have the circle record their discussion so I can listen to it later (as I'm jogging?) for quality and if I can't get to each literature circle to listen in while in class.

Our school is an arts-infused school with 1:1 iPads, so there's actually a lot of fun things that I can have students do with either the technology they have in their hands or their art journals (or both). They love making iMovies about literature (a good final activity) or "police reports" about a pivotal scene. My favorite one is a character based assignment which is kinda like a "What's on ___'s iPhone?" activity. The students need to draw or find an illustration that the character would have used for the "lock" screen or wall paper on the phone. Then, the student needs to tell me about three songs that character would have in their playlists and why those are "fitting" for that character. Then, they need to also provide me three "sample emails" that the character would have in their mail app in-box. (The iPhone and Police Report assignments I got from Laura Randazzo on Teachers Pay Teachers.)

I also blog with my students. :) That is a great place for them to write informal book reviews, work reflections, etc., for a real audience.

Aaahh . . . reading outside of class. I don't know about that one. Reading Logs ARE THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE AS A PARENT AND A TEACHER. I just don't know what to do about those things. I'd like to do away with them completely in my class this year, and I have wanted to do this for the past two to three years, but my "team" keeps overruling me and voting to keep them in their classes. I think I've decided that I'm NOT going to do them this year, but I won't necessarily advertise that to them. What has shaped my thinking on this is the frustration I have on my end about parents who complain (in frustration) that their kid is reading (and I truly believe they really are because most Honors kids are voracious readers [only a handful aren't]) but they forget to log, so their grade goes down a bit and, etc., etc., etc. Not that it matters because I make them worth so few points (5), and there is so much in the gradebook by the end of the quarter that missing one or two does NOTHING to the overall grade. (sigh) My own kid was this way, too, last year despite me asking him EVERY NIGHT/WEEK, "Did you log your reading?" (Because we have iPads, his teacher and I [I work in the same district as my kids, but at a different school] have a Google Form that we use to log the reading.) And then there is the inevitable question, "So can I make up a reading log?" And that has required a whole other set of procedures in my class. (Long story.) So . . . anyway, what is really starting to inform my decision on this is a book called Readicide by Kelly Gallagher. I've just started it, but I think it is starting to confirm what I've been feeling about reading logs for the past two years.

Since you have tenth graders, your expectations will be more than what mine are, and your district may have a "homework" policy that may guide your thinking on this. My students are getting used to having six or seven different teachers for the first time and managing all of that, so I can't really give you any guidance there. Except I will say that I truly believe that we are asking Honors students to simply think a bit differently about the same standards and material. This does not equate to MORE assignments simply because they can "handle it" more. I don't give any more assignments than my grade level team teachers do, but the quality of thinking that I require is just different. (I actually have the "Think Different" posters from the Apple ad campaign from years ago up on my wall.) When parents ask how my class is different from a non-Honors class, I tell them that the standards are the same and the material is the same, but we "think differently" about it, and may go into way more depth than a non-Honors class would. Our school also has a school-wide shared Google calendar for teachers that we put major tests, assignments, and projects on to so we can all "see" what's going on. We consult this to try to ensure that the students are having four tests on the same day, for example. That helps!

One last thing — sometimes Honors parents have a reputation for being more of a "problem" than non-Honors parents. I have never had an issue with these parents. I think if you are transparent and open about what is going on in your classroom (I have a Google calendar that they and the students can subscribe to), and answer email from them promptly, then all will be fine!

HAVE FUN! They are very fun kids!