Blogging and Reading Across the Curriculum

Blogging and Reading Across the Curriculum

Blogging is a very new experience for me. I have never been one to thoroughly enjoy reading for fun or writing out my thoughts just for the heck of it or to provide me with something I can re-read in the future. I have never felt the need to put my thoughts in words for my own benefit but rather only if I am having to turn it in.

As the blogging article suggests, times are changing for the middle school students and even some of the younger students. Almost all young teenagers and pre-teens have various social media sites such as twitter and facebook and they are constantly sharing thoughts, actions, or activities that they are currently engaging in. This is very different from my childhood. While some people had myspace or xanga during middle school, I never had these and most student’s lives didn’t constantly revolve around the posts that they make. Because their lives revolve around the advances in technology that are constantly occurring, teachers now can use blogging as an opportunity to bring technology into the classroom. If students are given the opportunity to reflect on something through a blog post rather than write a formal paper, most students would view this as a much less stressful task and something that could be seen as fun rather than the idea of slaving over a paper. Teachers are still being given the opportunity to assess whatever knowledge they need to but in a less formal way and students can use some of the many hours they devote to facebook and twitter postings to creating their own blog.

Reading across the curriculum was an idea that was very interesting however, very foreign to me. Prior to reading the article by Sanacore and Palumbo, I didn’t really know many of the ideas that were meant by “Reading across the curriculum.” I have never been a big fan of reading and generally only read books that are assigned to me for school. It’s not that I’m not interested in anything because I love to read the local newspapers to see what’s going on in the community or country but I generally have no desire to read things that are fiction or have no chance of happening such as the harry potter series or the hunger games. Nobody get too upset with me for that as I know I am in the minority.

The article made some very good points in my mind when it comes to what should be involved when talking about reading as part of the curriculum. I thought providing a significant amount of time during the school day was a very interesting and good idea that should be incorporated into schools more. Time for reading is generally assumed to be time that is spent at home and not in the classroom. I think that automatically makes reading become associated as something negative because most kids would rather do something active. If in the classroom, teachers allow students with time to read, they are showing it is important enough to spend valuable class time on that task. When educators say that there isn’t enough time in the year to provide for reading during the day, that can suggest that reading isn’t as important as the other tasks that are being done during that time in the day. I think if I had been given time during the school day that was devoted specifically to reading, it would have made me not only a better reader but made me more willing to read outside of the classroom. If reading is so important to the education of young students and middle school students, they must be shown that the educators are willing to provide some valuable time during the day for reading.

-Matt Reynolds