Weekly Reading: Sept. 30

1. What was the chapter about?
Chapter 3 in DZ discussed how over-used textbooks are and the reasons why textbooks are not a reliable resource: they are inaccurate, disorganized, poorly visually formatted, unfocused, broad but shallow in focus, and expensive. In addition, they are a static resource: they cannot, by nature, take into account new information or discoveries, and they are difficult to personalize to a specific class.

Chapter 4 in DZ promotes building a classroom library to incorporate into your courses, whether by assigning readings or by leaving it as a resource for students to borrow from and read. The materials should cover a wide variety of topics, genres, and reading levels so that they appeal to as many students as possible.

Allen discusses the enduring value of reading aloud to students, even if they are at an age where they find it silly or childish. It frees students to think about and interact with the text, rather than focusing on deciphering the words on the page. It also helps the students to hear the flow and rhythm of the language, particularly in formats which were originally written to be consumed orally (plays, poems, songs, etc.)

Harvey promotes nonfiction as the most valuable genre for students to read. He states that, because adults overwhelmingly read nonfiction as opposed to fiction, students should plan ahead and learn to read and enjoy nonfiction as well. However, this nonfiction should be chosen carefully, so that students are reading short, well-written, interesting pieces rather than long, wordy, or boring reference manuals.

2. What does this chapter tell you about teaching students?
Supplement a class with non-textbook resources as often as possible. This way, you can focus on important concepts and your students' interests, the students have less weight to carry home each day, and you can save money from buying textbooks to spend it on more valuable materials.

Supplementary materials allow you to dig deeper into a topic (which is a big tenant of Common Core), as well as capture and hold students' interest. Without interest in a subject, students will not pay attention and will not remember the topic even if they did pay attention.

Reading aloud to my students may be a good way to get my students' interest. Even if they think the activity is childish, reading aloud can help the students to focus on and absorb the text. Just be careful not to overwhelm their attention span the first time, or to let them goof off and distract the class during the reading.

Nonfiction is a powerful format for teaching information to students, and it can be just as interesting as a fiction book. They are also very easy to find, from websites to children's books and magazines to adults' "fun facts" collections and trade books.

3. Can this chapter be applied in your content area?
I already don't teach out of my textbook. I have taken the vocabulary lists from the textbook units and the (approximate) order of grammar concepts, but beyond that, my students do not use the textbook. We have a set of Latin for Americans sitting in the room, but I don't think that we've used them yet. The trouble with not using a textbook for Latin is that you must then supply all the translation passages and sentences -- unlike modern languages, Latin doesn't have a wealth of children's books to teach topics, and each grammar book goes in a different order and uses a different vocabulary list. As DZ's author noted, the supplementary materials for a textbook are often as boring and unhelpful as the textbook itself. This means that finding ready-made materials is very difficult, but writing practice texts is time-consuming as well.

I can collect culture resources easily enough -- pop culture has an eternal fascination with Roman history, culture, and mythology -- but the most valuable pieces are the most difficult to find. I need well-written and interesting pieces in Latin which are written at the different levels of my students' knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. I cannot give them a passage which uses the perfect tenses or pronouns (and especially not the subjunctive mood) if they haven't learned those topics yet, and rewriting a passage to fit their knowledge is tedious, time-consuming, difficult, and sometimes grammatically impossible. At the same time, my students desperately need the practice translating such pieces, because the only way to learn a language is to use it.

I can incorporate reading aloud to my students into translating -- they need to know how to pronounce the Latin anyway, and reading to them will help their oral comprehension greatly. To give them a sense of how authentic Latin sounds in English, I can read translations of texts to them, or (if I am feeling particularly ambitious) translate a short text in front of them. I can also give them short articles on everything from mythology to social structure to gender norms to conquered nations. As I already mentioned, mainstream American culture is endlessly fascinated by the Romans and ancient Greeks, and there is a wealth of material out there to give students, both academic and mainstream.