Seeking Understanding in Our Minds, in Our Lives

Keene stated in Chapter two, he remembered one time in his class where the students conversations about the books they were reading, absolutely astonished her! She remembered going home to her husband with great enthusiasm about her classroom experience and how amazing it was having them so interested and having their minds absorb and question so many details of the book. However, it made her start thinking about why can't they do this every day. I completely understand where she is coming from.

It is great having a child or a class finally “gets it" and use their minds in extraordinary ways, but it does not happen as often as teachers would like. "They don't concentrate long enough o have discussions like that every day; someone is always pulling them out of class to go to this or that special ed class or band; some of them have hormones raging; they usually want to talk about who is going out with whom and who got new skis. If there is an assembly, they take forever to refocus..." (Keene, 21) The biggest struggle I have come across with teaching is the time spent outside the classroom, or the interruptions that occur throughout the day. For children, it is hard to get them refocused on the lesson being taught and to engage their minds so they ask questions and search for inquiry.

Her chapter continued with how to bring that inquiry into a classroom on a daily basis. When I was reading through these ideas, they seemed great! However, I would need to break a lot of it down to an understanding level for elementary school children. It was a great chapter with a lot of good ideas that I would use in my own future classroom!

Keene, Ellin Oliver. (2008). To Understand New Horizons in Reading Comprehension. Seeking Understanding in Our Minds, in Our Lives, 20-40.