The Reading Process

I found our last class (May 7) to be very informative and eye opening. The video we watched The Myth of Average with the speaker Todd Rose really made me examine how classrooms can still largely be designed for the "average" student and the negative effects that produces. His comparison to the design of a pilot cockpit was effective and helped to drive home his message.

I am still shocked by the statistic he shared about 4% (approx. 50 000)of dropouts being gifted students. The fact that we continue to still have any dropouts is sad, but gifted students wouldn't be on my list for those who leave school early. Why are they dropping out? Due to the fact that we are still designing classrooms for the average student. This fact destroys the brilliant talent we see in our students and doesn't allow those students to be challenged. We all know that students can be gifted or talented in one subject area but do poorly in another area, however many classrooms are not flexible enough to create learning opportunities that will allow students to succeed with their particular learning style. This needs to be the focus if we want to nurture the talent and skills our students possess and allow them to show their true potential without being compared to the "average".

I also enjoyed learning the activity where we examined the reading process and all that is involved. When we discussed in class all of the complex tasks and features to reading a simple passage it really made me examine how our brain handles this complex task. It also made me have much more respect for students who face daily challenges in the classroom and the hurdles they need to overcome to learn the same way the "average" student does. It really is amazing that our brains can handle all of this input and allow us to make sense of it all. I started the task by thinking about things such as knowing letter, sound relationships and how we learn to chop and blend individual sounds, but my eyes were really opened when it was mentioned that our students with learning disabilities have so many more challenges to reading than just phonics. Also the fact that anxiety about reading also plays a huge role in even starting the task and staying focused enough to complete the task. When our students enter our classrooms in the mornings we don't know the events that happened before school that could have a drastic effect on how they will cope that day.

The last video we watched titled, The Reading Brain, was incredibly interesting and gave me more insight into the challenges faced by students with dyslexia. I enjoyed watching the techniques they were working on with the student and the changes that happened with him. I was amazed when they examined his brain activity 6 weeks later and saw differences in the right hemisphere and how his brain had changed in that amount of time. I plan on watching the remaining part of the video to learn more.