Good Times... Noodle Salad....

Literary reading, to me, is a simple concept. It is picking up a piece of literature and reading it. Now, this can be done in many different forms: poetry, novels, articles, papers, etc. However, I guess I'd like to focus on the type of literary reading that we will do for this class, which is mostly young adult books.

There are many different ways to read. Reading for class is different than reading for enjoyment though. Whenever I read books growing up, I always read for enjoyment. I was able to put myself in one of the characters bodies and actually become them for the book. I used to stay in my room for hours reading the Chronicles of Narnia.

However, reading for class was different. While I enjoyed the reading sometimes, I was mostly just looking for facts to make sure I remember the main points of the story. It was a different type of reading.

I think when I am a teacher I'm going to do this differently. I would much rather teach kids to read as if it's leisure reading. Make sure they have fun reading it, instead of making it a kind of book to remember points. I would want to motivate the kids to read the book for sheer enjoyment. This way, they will get more out of the book and remember even more.

If I was assigned to read a book, I wouldn't get as much out of it than if I picked it up myself. So I'll have to motivate my students to pick up a book on their own. Of course I'm going to have to do some reading assignments. However, I would have my kids go pick a book on their own to read as well. I would teach them about the different genres of books and how to look for the summaries. This way they will be able to pick out a book to read if they didn't have a specific one in mind.