Common Core- Zachary Forkash

Throughout this article, Ellen Carillo explains what the meaning of reading is, through and interesting perspective being the students perspective. Ellen tackles the question if students truly take the time to care about English and its curriculum  or not. Based on the article I do agree with Ellen Carillo’s concern as I personally can relate to this.  Whenever i am given an assignment to read through an article or a text, normally I am lost. The educational based reading system, while at its core is meant to provide an understanding of text, fails to deliver and more. When I’m reading a text, I fail to not only understand the text but I also fail to care. While reading through Ellen Carillo’s article, he goes on about how the CCSS fails to keep students engaged in what they’re reading. If the students aren’t engaged in their text, then how are they supposed to write a passionate paper about said topic.   Ellen moves on the explain about Google Knowledge and understanding, which is interesting. She goes on to describe how online reading makes us better at one than the other, which i disagree with.  I don’t believe that reading online makes everyone better at reading, only a group of people. Not everyone is the same, clearly, and with that people tend to intake information differently than others. Immersion is the key word. Some people feel that it is helpful to read online as it’s a better environment for learning, while others can concentrate more when looking at a text on paper. However despite all this, the real test of this theory lies in the COVID-19 era that we live in. If students truly learn and understand a text more online, then this is the time to test Ellen’s opinion. Pages 146-153 explain different strategies for students to become better readers. One strategy that stood out to me immediately was annotation. Annotation does provide a helpful understanding of the text as it allows the reader to gather their thoughts after reading a portion of the text. The reader can then gather all of their annotations together and place them into an understanding of the text.  I would suggest this strategy over the others as reading one short portion of the text over and understanding it through writing, can be beneficial as opposed to reading a long text and processing it all at once.