In the age of Googling on your phone for a quick answer or 24-hour news channels giving you two minute stories, are we really thinking deeply anymore? While I enjoy both quick fixes, we ought to spend time regularly analyzing complex subjects if for no other reason than to exercise the brain! Also, students need to practice this skill to be able to think independently.
Graeme Paton from The Telegraph writes
Pupils are so used to receiving information in fast, bite-sized chunks that many struggle to study more complex issues in proper depth, says Helen Fraser, chief executive of the Girls’ Day School Trust.
She says that children should be told to “switch off the computer, the radio, the smartphone, the TV and other distractions” and taught the importance of reading whole books from beginning to end.
She adds: “It’s only by learning deeply about and around a subject that you can truly hope to master it.”
Read the rest of the article here.
Rather than have short paragraph excerpts in our Gideon higher level reading comprehension, we have included entire chapters as the day’s reading. Most of one classic novel is read over a two week period. Our goal is to engage them with the characters and the story which will hopefully entice them to read the rest of the novel. Here’s a day’s reading below.
Dr. Dolittle – Chapter 3