Affective Dimensions of Reading

I’ve never really thought about if I was considered a “good reader” or not. But after reflecting on it I would say that I am. I can read quickly and accurately. I don’t really stumble over words unless they are ones I am unfamiliar with. If I don’t know a word I can easily “sound it out” and move through it onto the next. I enjoy reading comics, short news summaries, text messages, Facebook posts and if I had to decided whether to read a text online or out of a book I would probably pick the online text over the book. There aren’t very many occasions that I’ve really enjoyed reading in my life. There has literally been two times since I was probably sixteen that I looked forward to reading books for pleasure. The texts were two different series. One was the Crystal of My Heart series that my boss at the time was actually the author of. I loved how she wrote and the detail she had. She always kept it clean so I never had to worry about any cursing or areas I needed to skip over. I enjoyed her writing because it was a mix of real life and a different realm sort of thing. It kept me hooked because of the innocent romance, and as a sixteen year old that is what was important to me. I enjoyed getting lost in another world for a little while instead of dealing with the high school drama at the time. On the other hand of enjoying reading there are many times where I have not enjoyed reading. Mainly if there was a reading assigned in school. I can remember as far back as elementary when we were forced to read certain books for A.R. (accelerated reader). I hated this so bad because I wanted to be able to decide what to read and when I wanted to read it rather than being forced to have a certain amount of books read and tested on by a certain time. Along with that, I hate doing readings out of textbooks and supplemental readings that professors assign. I know there is a ton of good information in those things they ask me to read (or they wouldn’t have us read it), but I would rather have someone just summarize it for me and be able to discuss it with them rather than hashing through it myself.

As for different social networks; growing up I was always encouraged to read by my church. We were encouraged, but not forced really to read the Scriptures, which contain many different books. Unfortunately by the time I was old enough to read by myself the school system had gotten to me and I didn’t want to do anymore reading than I absolutely had to. My friends actually all liked to read different books. No one ever looked down on me for wanting to read (maybe because I never did haha).

In my classroom I would love to give students options of different ways to get the information rather than just copy it out of a text book or something. I want to incorporate fun worksheets and have texts that are interesting to read rather than dull and hard to follow. It would be nice for them to be able to have the text online and hard copy and give them that choice. As a student now I love it when teachers give me options of assignments to do. I would like to have that in my classroom and have different types of texts connected to those different options so they can choose which one fits them best. The area I most want to focus on is nutrition. If I help students with the vocabulary at the beginning of the units they will feel more comfortable with reading the assigned texts and therefore have a better self-perception of themselves as a reader in my class.