Reading shoud be Fun, -damental

Thanks to Latest News from the New York Times available on my Kindle, I read about a game played perhaps by well-read adults, something that the author would have done to pass summer nights by the shore.  He describes 'the paperback game', where a player reads the sensational description on the back of a book, then the other players write on slips of paper what could be the first sentence in the book.  The slips are collected, then players vote on which one they feel is the 'correct' one.  A player receives one point every time their 'sentence' receives a vote.  (Click this link/sentence to read the NY Times article.)

It would not be difficult to believe that such a game could be played by certain populations of people.  I leave it to your imagination to decide what that population looks like.  To me, it seems a summer pastime that I hope some of our students might be able to play someday, and to enjoy.

This 'game' is a variation on a reading strategy that is described in some of the books that I've been reading this summer.  The strategy is called "Anticipatory Guides", where prospective readers discuss among themselves before reading a selection what they anticipate they will learn from doing the reading.  Research has evidence that such a reading strategy improves understanding/comprehension of the selection, and with consistent use also bolsters reading skills.

I wrote earlier that I never took courses that would teach me how to be a teacher.  Part of my growth in this profession is to engage myself in that kind of learning.  As much as I owe it to my students, I owe it also to myself.  It was enjoyable to see how some of the routines that I'm learning about can actually be made into a form of fun.  Some might argue that making learning fun is a gimmick to get students to do what a teachers is asking of them.  Gimmick? Strategy? Routine?  Get them reading, whatever it takes.