Chapter 5 and making connections

After reading chapter 5, I started to think about a personal experience I had in High School. In chapter 5 I read about Brainstorming strategies, and I remember how my 12th grade English teacher would approach every reading assignment. Right before we would start any new book, he would have us speak out loud and just give out basic ideas of what we thought the book was about by looking at the picture on the front cover, the title, the author, the size of the book, anything we wanted. After this he would tell us a basic summary of what the book was about, confirming whether or not we were right. Every time we read the book for homework, the next day we would come in and talk about what we read, what we liked, didn't like and what we thought was going to happen next. This way, we were constantly making connections with the reading, and getting involved with it. At the end of the unit, we recapped on everything that we had read, talked about what we liked, didn't like, and then we had a book report. I really enjoyed this style of teaching because, as was discussed in one of our very first SED 407 classes, we made many connections and didn't forget the book. It made it interesting and I looked forward to talking about it every day. Making these connections to everything that we teach is crucial, no lesson should be half-baked, no matter what it is, if it's important enough to be taught, it's important enough to be taught well.