SOLC #9 One Benefit of Reading Widely

The Slice of Life March Challenge is hosted by Two Writing Teachers.

Throughout the year we do formative assessments and writing activities which are similar to our standardized test in the spring.  There is a plethora of these available online which makes it much easier for teachers to find resources.

A common writing activity is to continue writing a story.  For example, for one of the activities, students had to read an excerpt from a novel, and continue writing the story of the characters going down the river.

That was a pretty simple task as most students have background knowledge of being in some type of water or playing with some type of water vessel.  Sounds easy enough.

Another practice activity we completed was a historical fiction piece.  Students had to read a passage about a specific time in history and continue the story. If a student had no background knowledge about this time period, then this one wasn't quite so easy.

After the students were finished, I asked them what they thought about it.

Student:  "It was hard."

Me:  "Why was this one so hard?"

Student:  "Because I didn't know what they were talking about."

Student:  "I couldn't think of anything to write about."

Me:  "This was historical fiction.  So you are saying you had no background knowledge of this time period in which to draw upon or to give you an idea for your writing?"

Student:  "Yeah, I don't read those kinds of books."

Me:  "How many of you think you would have done better had you read at least one book set during this time period?"

Almost every hand went up.  

Me:  "This goes to show you that there is more to reading than the Diary of A Wimpy Kid books.  This is one of the many reasons why you need to read widely and to read many different genres.  Because you never know what you might find on that test."

End of the discussion.

Lesson learned.

Teacher smiling.

Bloggers note:  After reading Michelle's comment, I feel a need to clarify something.  I do not believe that students should read widely for a test.  That was not my intention for writing this post.  When a person reads widely, they have more knowledge on different subjects and genres.  This incident was just one of the many benefits of reading widely that came up in my classroom.