For this journal entry, I would like to
consider and reflect upon a question that Tompkins (2012) poses at
the end of chapter 5: "My seventh graders don't like to write in
reading logs. They say they want to spend more time reading. What
should I do?" (p. 132). As I think about this question, I am
taken back in time to my sophomore year of high school. My English
teacher assigned my class to finish reading Dickens' Great
Expectations (1861) over the winter
break from school. Normally this would not be a big deal, except that
for each chapter of this text, we were required to type up a corresponding chapter
annotation. And this book had 59 chapters
(although at the time, it felt like many more). Since it did not feel natural for me to sit and type at the computer while I read, I would read a few chapters at a time, and then face the frustrating task of going back and summarizing everything I had read. Returning to my initial question, Tompkins (2012)
responds: “The purpose of reading logs is to support comprehension,
not to interfere with reading. When upper grade students are reading
books independently, they don't need to keep reading logs” (p.
132). This task certainly interfered with my reading. Not only did this assignment overwhelm me because of its sheer magnitude,
but I also found that my chapter annotations, which were summaries of what I
had read, were of little use to me as a reader. I was not making immersion responses, involvement responses, or literary connections (Tompkins, 2012, p. 112). The only purpose of this assignment that I could see, was taking the pleasure out of reading a book that I would have otherwise enjoyed.
When I
consider Rosenblatt's aesthetic and efferent purposes for reading, I
feel as though a quality piece of literature such as Great Expectations
should be treated from an aesthetic perspective rather than the efferent approach that my teacher chose.
This specific event from my personal literacy development is
significant for me as a pre-service literacy specialist because I realize that it
was events such as this that shaped me into the reader that I am today.
Often times, I feel as though I have forgotten how to read aesthetically because so much of the reading that I have been required to complete over the course of my educational career has been treated as efferent reading. I felt a constant pressure to read as though I was going to be assessed on the content of every page (this often seemed to be true in my middle and high school years), and this stressful disposition toward reading continues to permeate my literate life. I think that this has had a
negative impact upon me as a reader because I find that I tend to
limit my reading to only required assignments rather than
seeking out reading experiences for the enjoyment of literature itself. As I consider the type of literacy instruction and
learning that I would like to see in my own classroom one day, it is my goal to use writing to encourage my students
to see the enjoyment and learning that can occur through reading, and to help them organize and clarify their ideas about a text. Writing about reading will be purposeful and authentic in my classroom.
As I compose this blog entry, I am considering the potential benefits of using this digital writing tool to motivate my future students to write about their reading in ways that will enhance their comprehension rather than interfere with their reading. From my experience with
using this blog so far, I think that this tool would
be motivating for my students because it provides the author with an authentic audience and
includes the option for readers to provide feedback in response to posts. Since bloggers are free to design the layout and style of their page, this digital tool gives writing a more personal feel than Microsoft Word documents. Having students write journal entries on a blog in response to their reading rather than composing monotonous chapter annotations
encourages students to reflect upon their thoughts, questions, and
responses to a piece of literature. Additionally, being able to
tag and automatically archive one's blog posts removes the
stress of organizing and keeping track of multiple entries. These
features would definitely have been helpful when I was composing my 59 chapter
summaries for Great Expectations, which I was saving and transporting from computer to computer on a floppy disk!
References
Tompkins,
G. E. (2012). Teaching writing: Balancing process and product (6th
ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.
