Clouds

Those clouds were decorating the landscape when I arrived home this afternoon. Rain is predicted. I hope the prediction is correct.

This has been a good day in the classroom. My students had a project to submit; they were given three articles and had to read them to find the author's main point and then summarize the message in each one. They also had to correctly cite the article for a bibliography. We've had one workshop in the classroom where we learned that most of the students could not locate a main point (sheeeeeeesh!).

So I had to show them the author's clues and signals and then send them off to write the summaries as homework. Because we did so much of the work together, I require an in-class project to complete this assignment. So in the classroom today they had to evaluate some summaries of articles that we have read aloud in the classroom and discussed them and then today they had to read one article quietly by themselves and then locate the main point. Not surprisingly the only students who accurately located the main points were the students who had performed quite well two weeks ago on their first quiz.

I think the real problem is that most of these kids are TV babies -- they have been raised by the television. Their parents never read aloud to them -- probably because the parents did not know to do so. Parents are not required to have an education nor a license, but they have possibly the most important job on earth, raising and training a human. Most of my students are future parents.

My students were not given the best start in school because they were not read to when they were youngsters. If I can convince just one of them to read for pleasure and then to read for knowledge, I will have made a difference in a life. Most of them think very little of the "sport" of reading.

If you know someone under the age of 20, read aloud to him or her. It will change his or her life. It will!

I was a adult before I discovered the wonder between the covers of books. My parents did not know to read to me. Thankfully I never fell in love with TV.

Good night from Southern California,
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol