Scattered Thoughts

So I've been thinking a lot about attention during reading. Obviously.

I wrote in an ENG classroom the other day that "Reading is a socially individual experience." And not to toot my own horn, but I think I hit something here. Someone can't read for us, thus it is individual. However, we have tons of other things in our brain besides squishy grey snot. We have reading strategies taught to us by teachers, other languages/dialects, movies, books, texts, poems, conversations, lectures and even that nagging feeling that I left the door unlocked. Besides all of that, during the actual reading process there is evidence that we actually place ourselves in the narrative, our brain activates motor cortex to perhaps mirror the actions occurring in the book and drawing on social experiences to dissect the story. Thus, reading is also incredibly social. I want to either prove or explore this idea in discussions of the experiment.

I tried so hard to prove that we learn to interact socially by reading books because I do believe it, despite no scientific evidence. I think we can prove that a lot is a happening in the brain during reading by this experiment, or rather, it is already proven and we get to talk about it in a different way! We also draw on our social experiences to enhance our reading. English Education majors constantly talk about student-to-text connections to deepen learning. How do you relate to this character or situation? Is there another text that relates to this? We draw on prior knowledge to engage students (as in SHAKESPEARE IS STILL AND ALWAYS WILL BE RELEVANT TO HUMANITY) and foster perspective analysis on both their and the text's social situation. But is this automatically happening in the brain. "Reading in the Brain" by Daehaene clearly states language happens in the brain, but what else besides that?

"Reading is a cognitive, social and cultural activity..." (71)

Also, "...our individual command of reading varies greatly from person to person, depending on how we learn to read." (71)
What are these differences in the subjects' brain? How do we as secondary ed teachers, who often are not the first people to teach students to read initially, deal with the variances in reading styles? I wrote earlier about reading strategies and this is an attempt to teach reading, but also kind of level the playing field. As we teach strategies, we also are attempting to get everyone reading at the same level, a loaded term. I would hope it's impossible to get everyone to read the same for that would diminish the unique interpretations and essays. However, ensuring everyone can read and process texts of the same density and complexity is a good goal. 

To move in a direction closer to what we can see, what areas are being activated? Is it worth the teacher's time to teach close reading? Are there more effective ways to teach close-reading? What are the benefits of spending precious class time having students pleasure read?

I read a study called, "Properties of Attention During Reading Lessons" (1992) that I had some serious problems with, but still was able to draw something from it. They watched 2/3 graders while each read aloud and based on physical appearances determined if the students were paying attention or not. Urg. Anyways, the silver lining.

"Probably what happens when a text becomes too difficult and errors rise is that children's strategies break down and they become discouraged." (171) The authors go on to posit that too easy reading does not foster learning and neither does super hard reading. Instead, like Goldilocks discovered, it's the middle ground that is the best for children, or the zone of proximal development. The article also cites Gaffney and Anderson who say, "Moreover, whether a particular child will find a particular book easy or difficult depends upon the context in which the book is read and the conditions surrounding its use." (171) This idea of external influences is interesting in our experiment.

At the upcoming think tank, I want to talk about external influences since they are a huge part of education.

I will end it here for tonight. More to read! Happy thinking!