When you were in secondary school, how did reading take place in your learning?
When I was in secondary school we participated in project based learning and it dominated most of our time. I remember a lot of our reading came from huge packets that consisted of information related to a particular project. To know how to do the project and what to include you had to read it thoroughly a couple of times. Most of the projects weren’t centered around reading but I can remember one or two projects that were about a book we had to read. We were allowed to pick any book but it did have to be at like a 6th grade reading level. All I can remember doing is reading and then doing a report on that book.
When did you read and how did you read?
I remember doing a good bit of in class reading but it wasn’t for novels, it was more about reading for information that was relevant to the current standard at that specific time. For this kind of reading I would usually read the whole thing once and then go back through and pick out parts that I needed for class. The other times I can remember reading was outside of school and it was assigned by my English Language Arts teacher. This reading was bigger novels and sometimes we would have choice over what we read. I always read super-fast and would have to, almost always, go back and reread everything to understand it all.
How are the strategies in TIDL connected to or different from your existing knowledge of what reading is and how reading should be taught?
In the TIDL reading there was on strategy that stuck out to me because it was the opposite of what I did in school. It discussed having students read in pairs instead of reading in a group setting. Throughout my K-12 education, we always read stories, plays, and anything else out loud as a whole class. In the chapter, it talked about how reading in pairs leads to students being more at ease and able to focus on the reading better. Granted this was different than what I experienced but I do agree with it and see how it would be more appropriate for reading.
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Ryan Greene 
You wrote that your teacher gave out huge packets of reading material for the students. I wanted to make a comment about that. In my experience as a student, my peers and I often did not read such daunting, long reading material thrown at us. I know that I still would refuse to read such things. One suggestion I have for ELA teachers is to divide up the readings into more manageable and less intimidating sections. This way, the students won’t feel overwhelmed into just giving up and not reading at all.
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Dain,
I totally agree with you, it was to much information to read at once. I never enjoyed that type of reading and dividing it up would be much better.
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Ryan,
I had a very similar experience in secondary education. It was often a great deal of reading that often felt like busy work. I rarely took the time to read the lengthy readings of that nature as I felt it was a waste of time. I experienced both paired reading and reading as a whole class. As you mentioned the paired reading was much more beneficial and much easier to follow along with. When we did the large group readings I often would find myself getting lost in day dreams rather than paying attention to the content.
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Jason,
I definitely understand the feeling of busy work and I often would day dream as well in those kind of situations.
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