Pick Books You Like
September 1st, 2009I read an article by Motoko Rich in the August 29, 2009 issue of The New York Times that talks about the future of reading. Rich writes about Lorrie McNeill, a middle school teacher in Jonesboro, Georgia who last fall turned over the reading assignments for her seventh and eighth graders to the students themselves.
Rich states that the approach, called reading workshop, is catching on throughout America’s public schools as a way to teach students how to enjoy reading rather than forcing them to read traditional tomes such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved or Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a selection that McNeill used to require her students to read. Selected school districts in Chicago, Seattle, and New York are employing similar tactics, according to Ms. Rich. At the same time, she states that none are going as far as Ms. McNeill who attended a seminar in Atlanta taught by Nancy Atwell. Atwell and Lucy M. Calkins at Columbia University’s Teachers College have emerged as “gurus” of the reading workshop movement.
