The message of the intro and first chapter of Readicide is mainly concerning the idea that students are simply being taught how to achieve in test taking. Readicide involves the deterioration of pleasurable reading in order to force students into higher achievement of standardized testing. I thoroughly agree with the evidence shown in Readicide. I have witnessed in my small amount of teaching experience, these thoughts in action. While I was assisting at a middle school in middle Georgia, I witnessed students being taken out of normal classroom schedules in order to utilize the time in a mathematics "blitz" setting. Our traditional learning styles need to be changed, I agree, but not to the extreme that we only concern our teaching with standardized test scores. I think that schools are starting to focus too much on testing achievement and it is stealing the "well-rounded" feel of today's student.
Honestly to this point I am not sure how to help students in my classroom to more effectively read in my content. I hope that through further reading I am able to apply new techniques in my future classroom.
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Kid-watching will be another important way you will be able to tell what your students need. Kids typically have problems with word problems (adults too!). Last semester one of the math teachers in my class noticed that his kids read the math problem straight through and then were absolutely confused. Mathematicians do a lot of re-reading, but to most kids re-reading is anathema. Reading it once is enough and they are use to reading narrative. Math people chunk reading and then stop and think and analyze and make connections and ask questions. So, that's what he demonstrated and he gave his students a model for the kind of close reading and critical thinking that is part of successfully making sense of word problems. So maybe you can begin thinking about your own reading in math. How you do it and what your students might have trouble with.
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