With the explosion of the e-readers many schools have recently been trying to develop classes that allow their students to select their own books to read. I believe that these classes are very beneficial to students when created correctly. Letting students pick what they want to read gives them a wide range of freedom and enables them to read books that they are actually interested in. Every student has different taste in books that they like to read, so why should teachers pick the books for you? From experience many books that I have been assigned to read in school I did not like very much. When students read books that they show no interest in they tend to either skim through the book or not even read it at all. It is very difficult to read dozens and dozens of novels throughout your school career that you have no desire to read.
It seems as though having a class in which every single student reads a different book could cause for much chaos and confusion. After my semester of Readers' Choice I realized this class is able to function due to the certain assignments that we were given and the complete organization that was observed. This class was able to run pretty smoothly with little confusion. I believe that the guidelines we were given in order to pick a book were both effective and necessary to the making of this classes success. An element of this class that I liked the most was that after reading individual books the entire class would come together and discuss what we have read. This gives everyone the opportunity to learn about other authors and books and maybe find a book that they hope to read in the future either for class or on their free time.
Since I have been in the class Readers' Choice I have been able to read many books that I very much enjoyed. From reading books that I enjoyed I was also able to learn a lot. Many may say that students can read their books of choice on their own time, but the reality is that most students will not read in their free time. The element of choosing what you are reading, within broad guidelines, while also still being forced to read is very advantageous. From this class I have grown to enjoy reading a lot more than I ever have before and I was finally able to explore different types of novels.
Dearest Melissa S,
ReplyDeleteThis year in my school, Readers' Choice became an option for us. My friends and I decided to take it because the teachers told us it would consist of simply choosing books, reading, blogging, and discussing our books. However that was not the case. As a class, i really enjoyed it and liked the idea of choosing our own books. I chose books by an author I read from over the summer and discovered he is a great author and love his books. Reading our own books were fun and enjoyable because they were what we picked and not the lame and boring books the schoool usually requires us to read. However, other than that, the class was ludacris. The amount of work assigned with this books was an outrage. Every single day there would be another assignment tacked on to our books that was completely unnecessary. The work was annoying and tedious and took away from the class. I agree with you that the class is great with its ability to choose your own book, however the work is crazy. Hopefully in the next few years, they will drop the amount of tedious work, and focus more on the reading.
- Willy Shake Dat A$$
I agree Melissa. I like the fact that the class allows us to choose our own books to read. By doing this I was able to read books that I really enjoyed (except 11-22-63 of course). I was also able to explore diffferent genres in the class by choosing books that were not hte same throughout the semester. The idea for this type of class is great becuase it shows students that there are books out there that they would really enjoy. However, I also agree with Willy Shake Dat A$$ that the work got to be too much. I understand that it is hard to complete assignments on a novel until it is fully read, but the amount of projects and the way they were all due one day after another became very stressful and at times just too much. But not including all the work, I really do think that this is a good class for students to consider taking.
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