To read is to empower
To empower is to write
To write is to influence
To Influence is to change
To change is to live.
~ Jane Evershed ~
More than a Tea Party
The way a book is read- which is to say,
the qualities a reader brings to a book-
can have as much to do with its worth
as anything the author puts into it.
~ Norman Cousins ~
You learn to read so you can identify the reality in which you live, so that you can become a protagonist of history rather than a spectator.
Father Fernando Cardenal
When we read a story, we inhabit it.
The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story.
And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.
~ John Berger ~
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~
When I look back, I am so impressed again
with the life-giving power of literature.
If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of
myself in the world, I would do that again by reading,
just as I did when I was young.
~ Maya Angelou ~
“A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.”
– Samuel Johnson
Proficient readers, sometimes automatically, sometimes purposefully, must first be meta-cognitive: they must be aware of their own comprehension.
– Elin Keene and Susan Zimmermann Mosaic of Thought p. 41
We have become convinced that if we tell our students that we’re going to start the year reading books that are easy for us, books we can zoom through, this will give many of our students the permission they need to read books that are, in fact, appropriate for them.
– Lucy Calkins The Art of Teaching Reading p. 339
Reading aloud is a commercial for reading…Think of it this way, McDonald’s doesn’t stop advertising just because the vast majority of Americans know about its restaurants. Each year it spends more money on ads to remind people how good its products taste. Don’t cut your reading advertising budget as children grow older.
– Jim Trelease The Read Aloud Bible
Exceptionally skilled readers never use only one of the strategies described in this model; rather they fluidly coordinate a number of strategies to ensure maximum comprehension of the text.
“Metacognitive Assessment Strategies,” Israel, Bauserman, and Block, Thinking Classroom: A Journal of the IRA,Volume 6, Number 2, April 2005.