The Impact Of Social Environment On Student Achievement And Productivity

When students learn about subjects they are familiar with, it allows the content area being taught to become meaningful. As mentioned in Chapter 6, on page 149, motivation to read can come because they are interested in the content. When students are interested in the content they are reading, their needs are being met, and they will be well prepared for a successful literacy experience.

“School made us ‘literate’ but did not teach us to read for pleasure.” -Ambeth R. Ocampo

Reading is boring, I hate reading. These are two common sentences that you hear before and after ELA class. This is because they are reading a book that is boring to them and they are not interested in that book. They are being forced to read rather than reading something that they will enjoy. This is why choice reading matters. Choice reading allows the student to be able to read what they want. This way reading becomes more of a hobby and less of a boring task to the student. Choice reading not only brings pleasure but it allows you to travel to faraway places, to imagine different world, to learn about different cultures and to learn about some of the top minds of history.

Asch, Solomon E. "Opinions and Social Pressure." Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. 9th ed. Eds. Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005. 306-312.

In college, there are two main classifications of books: those read because they are required reading and those read because they are desired reading. Sometime however, a book can be read to both fulfill a class requirement, and be enjoyed on its own merit: The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor, by Patricia J Williams, is one such book. It is obvious what makes a book required reading, but what is it that makes a book desired, enjoyable, even fulfilling reading? In a polling of several university students, the most common responses to this question were: “the book must be well written”; “a book in which the reader can personally relate to the writer or characters is held in much

Reading can promote more meaningful learning. According to results from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE, 2004),

For this assignment, I chose the article Motivating Students to Read in the Content Classroom: Six Evidence-Based Principles by William Brozo and Sutton Flynt. This article first talks about how a survey of motivation to read showed a large majority of fourth graders say reading was not their favorite activity and they did not like to read frequently. The authors proposed six ways to get children more involved in reading, starting with elevating their self-efficiency. Students who possess high, school-related self-efficiency outperform their less-engaged peers. Teachers can create conditions for students that are associated with increased perceptions of competence and the student will consequently sustain an effort to be successful. The next point made in this article is to engage interest in new learning. Basically this means to generate interest in new content, making students more likely to put forth necessary efforts to read and learn the new material. “This realization should lead teachers to incorporate a variety of instructional practices that embrace multiple forms of literacy, multiple sources of information, and student choice

Reading provides young children to not only build a bond with their caregivers, but also increase their aptitude for learning and their ability socialize into the world of academia. Children’s books are a great tool to instill societal values and beliefs, in

After reading Susan D. Blum I do very much believe that reading is being valued less and less and that students are not using reading as a daily tool. Even for me I believe reading is getting rare as I skim a lot of my reading instead of actually reading it. The idea of assigned reading, as the core activity of college students, is old. Students these days don’t value reading as much as they don’t believe it’s a necessity in class. However, I’ve thought that about this many times and I believe if you don’t read then you won’t be able to do well in the class and won’t ever grasp the full knowledge that might be necessary.

Ripp points out in this article is the importance of keeping the students interested and engaged in books. For any number of reasons, such as trying to fit in or juggling priorities in general, students often completely give up on reading for enjoyment, and, as Mrs. Ripp mentions, “There is no year that we cannot lose a reader.” In essence, the point she is trying to get across is that students of any age are prone to developing a negative attitude or outlook towards reading. For some students, this might come as a result of being a struggling reader, while for others it may be as simple as not knowing how or what to read for pleasure. Where these issues are concerned, Mrs. Ripp has taken it upon herself to instill a new – or renewed – love and passion for diving into a good

Elementary school teachers are constantly looking for a way to do things better. How can I engage my students in my instruction? How can I make their learning purposeful to their lives? How can I be more efficient in my planning and effective in my teaching? The Daily 5, a reading instruction program created by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser, claims to be the answers to these questions. Boushey and Moser (2012) created the program after teaching and observing others’ literacy blocks. The program is said to “engage students, [and] also teach and promote self-independence on tasks” so that the classroom teacher can attend to individual students’ needs (LaShomb, 2011, p. 1). Boushey and Moser (2006) claim that not only does the program allow students to become self-sufficient learners, but it also engages them in meaningful literature daily.

Students display higher participation in reading and writing activities, when the dynamics of their surroundings, in which they are exposed to, exhibit respect and encouragement. A mutual respect shown between the students and teacher is vital, as well as providing students the opportunity to collaborate with their peers in a small group setting. In a classroom full of students,

Educators are charged with not only teaching the content of their subject, but also responsible for creating a learning environments that fosters communication, engagement, and reflection so that the students will be prepared for their future careers and learning. Creating a classroom that fosters reading and writing is one way to engage students while promoting that they reflect on the material and communicate their understanding or misconceptions of the content. In order to form a literacy-rich classroom educators need to increase the amount of time students interact with all forms of print and literacy and the classroom environment is an essential key to setting the precedent and model behaviors that will make students more successful and capable of high level learning. (Tyson, 2013)

She states that the only way students’ reading levels, vocabulary and background knowledge and stamina to read will grow is by allowing students to read challenging books (p.4). In addition, the author goes on to say if students can read books on their own then it is not a useful book to study. However, in order to aid students while reading challenging books teachers need to utilize Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. In order to make certain that students are prepared for the real world, teachers need to plan ahead to ensure that students understand what they are

Reading requires a habit. Without much practice, students do not have good reading skills. With a lot of reading, students will be able to find out past events, current, and can predict the events that will occur later. Students who have reading habits are capable of using time to read activities. Demand for information needs that continue to grow over time can actually be facilitated through reading activities. But this fact becomes different when the reading habits of students are still low.