A Struggle With Reading... Or Lack Thereof

As I continue to work through Cris Tovani's book Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?, I'm exploring my own reading abilities and what has influenced them. I love reading! I always have. And that might be due to the fact that I've always been pretty good at it. Or the fact that I usually find books whose topics I enjoy. Or a multitude of other things. I'm even enjoying Tovani's book right now, surprisingly enough. How often do we get assigned a book to read for a class and enjoy it?! And how sad is that question? I hope that through this class and exploring how to make reading more enjoyable for students, my students will not have to ask questions like that. Reading in class should make students curious so that they are encouraged to do their own research on those topics.

This week I read her chapter on accessible texts and how to find accessible texts for your classroom when your students' reading levels are all over the place. There is this new concept of "Text Sets". Depending on the subject, teachers can create boxes full of reading material at all different reading levels, all "organized into different units of study". Tovani does a great job of giving examples of how to create these sets for all different subject areas, and I love the idea of this! I'm not sure how much I love the idea of actually carrying it out though. 

For example: How much is it going to cost to collect all of these materials? I know that some of the materials could be printed articles, but books are going to make up most of the set. How long is this going to take to create the sets? This is NOT a cop-out and me wanting to take the easy way out. I'm earnestly wondering if this would need to be an entire-summer-long project. 

Here are some major "ups" of this idea of text sets: It offers students with all different reading levels opportunities to learn the material in a class. It reduces the frustration of students not being able to understand material. Students can gain the same information that they would receive in a textbook but in a more interesting way. There will be may options for readings texts with different lengths and structures. The information obtained should be relevant and allow students to make connections to other classes and their lives.

So what is the consensus? I love the idea of text sets, but they intimidate me. Especially in the area of mathematics. Maybe intimidation is good though. It will require me to work through something difficult just like I will ask my students to. Maybe I'll challenge myself and start coming up with a list of articles to use in a math classroom. I can keep a folder on my computer for different units and file the articles in there. I don't think on a college student's budget I'll be purchasing many books yet. :)

"Content Literacy - the ability of someone to interact with and use strategies to interpret the content of some subject (in its own language) including being able to speak, listen to, read, and write in that language"

{Sassy}