Day 2: Readicide conversation

Yesterday saw Radical Nation join together with Kelly Gallagher for the beginning of a four-day focused conversation on the state of reading instruction in our classrooms (see here)—-and the conversation has been nothing short of amazing.

Some quick highlights:

Bill Gaskins asked whether or not reading instruction has appropriately changed with the times, adjusting to the reality that online reading is becoming an increasingly important part of our children’s lives.  What impact should this have on the way we teach reading, he wonders.

A brilliant participant who I’ve decided to call Sister Lionfish (Rat-fro-con-lionfish) has started a strand on the importance of “giving students permission to fall in love with nonfiction reading again.”  She’s a science teacher who is working hard to teach reading in her classroom.

Another participant named Chapman noticed a trend in her classroom:  Students have grown comfortable with some of the mind-numbing instructional practices in our reading classrooms.  We’re currently trying to figure out why that happens.

On our final slide, Clix has asked an incredibly important question for every reading teacher to consider:  How do we know whether we are overteaching or underteaching the novels that we tackle in our classrooms.

A pointer for participants:  Many users have asked whether it is possible for one person to leave more than one comment on each slide.  The answer is yes—and I hope you will!  Ongoing dialogue between participants around one concept is what makes a conversation healthy.

When you do, though, you won’t see a new icon added around our focusing quote.  In order to keep a slide from getting cluttered with icons, whenever a participant adds a second comment to a slide, Voicethread adds the comment to the conversation without adding a new icon.

Other participants will know that you’ve added a second comment by looking at the timeline found beneath each slide, where they will see a new yellow comment tab.  They will also see a yellow box surrounding your icon.

Here’s to hoping that you’ll take the time to stop by our conversation before it ends on Thursday!  Not only will you learn a ton….we’ll learn a ton from you!