"Readicide" by Kelly Gallagher

            Much like Cris Tovani’s book, Readicide by Kelly Gallagher is a great book and a great tool for teachers to use to look for ways to get their students to love reading and to comprehend what they’re reading.  I feel like these two books overlap in some ways because they both talk about how students are “fake reading” because they are having trouble figuring out strategies to use to comprehend text and about how students have come to hate the thought of reading because everything they have to read is specifically for tests or an assignment and it doesn’t spark their interest.  Students aren’t reading for pleasure anymore, they are reading because they have to.  In “Readicide,” Kelly Gallagher is saying that schools need to focus less on tests and teaching to the test and focus more on letting students get immersed into books that interest them.  If students are reading, they are learning.  Something Gallagher talks about that I really liked was that teachers are over-teaching novels to the point that students are starting to hate reading.  They aren’t able to get into the “reading flow” that Gallagher talks about so much in the book and that we as adults are able to get into so easily when we’re reading for fun.  Teachers should want to help students discover that “reading flow,” because once you experience that, you realize how fun reading is and how it can take you into another world for a while and allow you to block out everything else around you.  If you over-teach a book and stop students constantly to reflect on what they read and to answer questions about what they read, they will never reach that “reading flow.”  How would you like it if you had to stop every ten minutes to reflect on what you read?  Students are going to get burnt out on reading if this is how you teach a novel.  I think one of the most important things I’ve learned from this book is that you have to find a balance between over-teaching a book and under-teaching it.