Learning Strategies

As I described in my post of November 3, Weston High School is currently engaged in a school-wide interdisciplinary project: reading Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains and integrating it into every course in every subject. The integrating will happen in January, and Kidder is coming to speak to the whole school at the beginning of February. We began the project yesterday with a 15-minute intro in the auditorium followed by a 30-minute silent reading period.

Apparently silent reading is no longer done in school, or maybe it just isn’t done in high schools, or maybe most kids don’t read anymore. Too many students said that they couldn’t possibly read silently for half an hour, and too many said that they couldn’t possibly read a 300-page book by January.

This might, of course, be statistically misleading. After all, it’s the complainers who are most vocal and most likely to say something — in this and every other context. Let’s see what happens next week, when we have three 39-minute silent reading periods.

Labels: teaching and learning, Weston