The article “Why Literature Matters” by Dana Gioia is about how the decline in reading literature by American young adults has a negative effect on society. Although, the effect of reading has diminished in America, the negative effects on society are lack of imagination, becoming less informed, and young adults becoming inactive. In the article, the author used the 2002 survey of Public Participation in the Arts, an article from Wired Magazine, and the Reading at Risk Survey. He used these sources to back up his claim that reading is declining among young Americans. If they were substituting literature for history, biographies, or political works it would not be as bad, but the fact that they aren’t reading at all is a concerning trend(Gioia1,2).…
Inquiry is about being open to wonder and questioning. If you are an inquirer you are curious and always asking a lot of questions, you love learning, and you are using critical thinking. Inquiry is important because being an inquirer allows you to learn more than what you learn in the curriculum and be prepared for any forks in the road. I have demonstrated inquiry through extra-curricular activities by working and asking questions with peers in karate, use critical thinking in chess club, wonder what may happen next in the book I’m reading in the Red Maple reading club, and more. I’m always striving to gain more knowledge by participating and asking many questions in anything accessible to myself.…
According to Paul Ekman, Ph.D., emotions is what unifies all of humankind, also, that all individuals have the same emotions. There is evidence that there are about six or seven types of emotions. But what are the characteristics of emotions? Paul Ekman informs us that one of the first characteristics of an emotion it that it’s unbidden.…
Reading and Thought Essay In the article “Reading and Thought,” Dwight Macdonald expresses his disagreement with Henry Luce’s idea of functional curiosity. Henry Luce defines functional curiosity as a kind of searching, hungry interest in what is happening everywhere—“born not of an idle desire to be entertained or amused, but of a solid conviction that the news intimately and vitally affects the lives of everyone now.” On the other hand, MacDonald’s opinion on the idea of functional curiosity is that while curiosity exists, it does not help the person strengthen his or her reading skills. Macdonald compares today’s writings to how they were in the past eras and find modern day writings to be overwhelming and irrelevant.…
Stephen Hawking, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ralph Broun, John Hockenberry, Marlee Matlin, Stevie Wonder, Helen Keller, and Frida Kahlo are some of the smartest and most successful people of their times, and they all have 1 thing in common. All of them have a physical disability. Now imagine if Stephen Hawking or Ralph Braun had been forbidden for getting a regular education. Students with physical disabilities should be allowed to go to regular school. The books Wonder, out of my mind…
Throughout elementary school reading was my biggest passion, but as I began competing on upper-level athletic teams and participating in academic competitions I lost time for reading, and my passion dissipated. I enrolled in this course because it is a required general education course for business majors, not expecting it to have the beneficial impact it did. Interpretation of Literature taught me to critically analyze novels and short stories, as well as changed my perception of poetry and readings assigned as coursework. As a first-semester freshman at the University of Iowa I did not know what to expect from college classes—specifically my general education courses such as the Interpretation of Literature. Although I knew I enjoyed reading, I also knew I did not like reading books that were assigned for classes because I found them…
Book clubs are a great way to have kids learning collaboratively with their peers. When students work in book clubs, the learning that takes place comes more naturally. An example of such learning is determining the meaning of the text or gaining a deeper understanding of the text. In book clubs, the main goal is to build an interpretation of a text by visualizing and talking about the text with peers (O'Donnell-Allen, 2006, p.13).…
The young adult reader that I chose to interview is my younger brother Walker Smith. Walker is fifteen-years-old and currently in the tenth grade. Walker’s interest in books that he chooses to read are simply put as “only books I can get into.” Particularly, he enjoys reading action and mystery books, and he has an inclination that he would be interested in “comedy” books, though he has yet to read any. Aside from books, Walker also enjoys reading sports magazines and books that involve sports.…
All It Takes In the 3rd grade, I remember my teacher telling me that reading will be the one thing in your life that you will always enjoy. I really never understood how she could come to that conclusion. I was not the kind of person who cared about reading, nor did I actually take the time to learn about characters and try to relate to them. It was not until I felt myself flying in the air and soaring in the sky with them. It was not until I felt like I was living in the same world as them.…
Literature circles are a student led response on what they have read. They are often in small groups and discuss topics on the characters, events, and relate what the author had stated into their real life connections. “Literature circles provide a way for students to engage in critical thinking and reflection as they read, discuss, and respond to books (Campbell Hill, Schlick, Johnson , & Johnson, 2001, para.3).”Students gain a much deeper understanding of what they have read by discussing with one another as well as including a lengthy written and creative response. Literature circles promote Cooperative learning and critical thinking skills which in turns leads to many pros for Literature Circles. Lit circles are student group led discussions…
I could sense her energy grow as she was helping me find sources we thought might be helpful. After sitting down to flip through the books, I found myself wondering if my own students ever get excited when they are finding potential sources for their research. This experience made me think about assigning my students a trip to the public library for homework points. One thing I noticed about the way Claire searched for books is that she did not use the computer. She already knew what nonfiction area to look.…
The primary directive of Daniel Perez-Zapata and Virginia Slaughter’s article is to examine the implications of culture on the process of developing mind reading. The article summarizes different studies pertaining to the development of mind reading within various cultural contexts. The authors begin by defining mind reading or the theory of the mind as the capacity to monitor one’s or other individuals’ mental status. For instance, a person can have a general perspective of what his or her friend is feeling or thinking based on intuition. According to Slaughter and Zapata (2014), mind reading is viewed as a universal aspect amongst human beings.…
From the very moment the students walk into my mentor’s English classroom, they are expected to write from a prompt she has displayed on her Smart board. She has set a routine and ritual that the students are accustomed to and allows for them to know exactly what to expect when they enter her class. The prompt is always an essential question that can apply to all of her students. The question initiates a discussion that engages the class and it also provides a connection to the topic that the class will be exploring during the class period. For example, the other day her warm-up prompt instructed the students to write five sentences about whether they like scary movies and to explain why they feel the way they do about them.…
1.1 At the end of 2010,Wasfi Al-Qadomi and Shaden Abdel-Rahman with a group of young people began to think about the establishment of reading group aims to spread the culture of reading in local communities, especially among the youth, group meetings began in February 2011, and rolled meetings to become two sessions within the field of literature and the novel, and the second in the field of intellectual books and diverse, these sessions have been scheduled to be monthly each person must read the book that everyone voted on then they meet in a public space to discuss the book in deep. Aim behind the "Inkitab" to promote reading in Arabic to promote reading culture in our communities and perhaps between this and that touched social, political…
Each afternoon in my placement class, we have readers’ workshop. This block generally begins with a short minilesson. Some of the minilessons we have had so far include: connecting and empathizing with characters, how readers can make predictions, a genre study of realistic fiction, how to become active readers, and how to find ‘just right books’. The students then listen to a read aloud, or engage in guided reading.…