Gordon, B. (2018). No More Fake Reading. SAGE Publications.
Reviewed Lauryn M.
Who Am I?
My name is Lauryn M., and I am a Junior at Oklahoma State University studying Secondary Education. I am working towards becoming a middle school or high school English teacher, and want to make a difference in my community where I end up with my teaching career. I have lived in Oklahoma my whole life, and am not opposed to working in Oklahoma whenever I graduate college.
What do I want to better understand as a teacher?
I want to better understand how to incorporate independent reading into the classroom, and help students find love and joy in the texts that they are reading. I want to learn how to incorporate different reading strategies into the classroom, and how these reading strategies are going to help students to become better readers and more engaged with the ‘classics’ because of the independent reading they are doing.
Who is the author?
The author of No More Fake Reading is Berit Gordon, and works to help teachers find better ways to implement independent reading into their classrooms. With this book in particular she gives strategies and different examples of how exactly to do this in your own classroom.
What questions or problems is this book working to answer?
This book is specifically working to answer the question, “How do we get students to learn to love reading again?” Gordon is trying to merge the classics with independent reading to create a more engaged
classroom, and to help students find a love for reading and an excitement for reading. Gordon provides many different pictures, handouts, drawings, in class photos of students working, quotes from students, and images to provide evidence for the strategies she is recommending be implemented to encourage reading into her classroom.
Passages worth sharing:
Chapter 1: Why are my students snapchatting their way through the Odyssey– and what can I offer instead.” This chapter covers how exactly to implement independent reading into your classroom, how to start your classroom library, and what students like to see in the classroom library. For example, on page 16 there are pictures from classrooms of the progress that students are making in their reading. It even states, “Teens still like getting a sticker for books completed.” The examples and images that are provided in this chapter would be extremely helpful to a new teacher who is setting up their classroom or a teacher who is just starting their classroom library.
Secondly, chapter 3 and chapter 4 go over strategies to incorporate nonfiction and fiction texts into the classroom. These chapters once again give very helpful charts, images, and ideas on what exact steps you can take to implement both of these strategies. An example of one of these charts is on page 101 with “Unit and Focus Skills, Essential Questions, class texts, and choice texts.” This allows students to incorporate some choice reading while also reading nonfiction texts.
Chapter 5 also goes over, “What to Plan for Day to Day” giving great examples of how exactly to incorporate independent reading, with time frames and charts for time management in your classroom. These chapters discussed would be very helpful for a new teacher or for a teacher who is just starting independent reading and does not know where to start.