9. Reading for enjoyment: Does it really matter?? From Reading Reasons by Kelly Gallagher “ Time spent reading correlates strongly with higher test scores…the more students read, the higher they scored on standardized reading exams” (Gallagher 7). Percentile Rank Min. of reading/day Est. number of words read/year 10 1.6 51,000 20 3.1 134,000 50 12.9 601,000 70 21.7 1,168,000 90 40.4 2,357,000 98 90.7 4,733,000 … YES! It does! Simply reading 10-20 minutes per day will significantly impact your vocabulary. Pick up anything that interests you—magazines, newspaper, biographies, romance novels…!
You can’t learn from books you can’t read. science is one content area with particularly intense literacy expectations. “The sheer number of science concepts included in science texts almost precludes anything but listlike study of vocabulary that can only be cursorily explained in the space allowed. Often the vocabulary in a 1-week science unit is greater than that of a similar unit in a foreign language” (Elyon & Linn, 1988, as cited in Grossen, Ramance, & Vitale, p. 444).
Introduce handouts (remind them objectives are there and then there are reflection/note taking boxes for each of these motivations) Jess