RE: would you ask your kids?

I’ve been working with Dr. Lisa Lenhart for about 6 years at the University of Akron. She gave me a start as a graduate assistant back in the 2004-2005 school year, as I was working on my principal’s license, and I’ve hung around ever since. Lisa has opened up a lot of doors for me, and I have the utmost respect for her as an educator, a professional and a person. She’s currently working on revising one of her textbooks, Reading and Learning to Read, and I received the following email from her about a week ago.

Would any of you be willing to ask your kids these questions and give me their quotes back? I’m working on my book revision and we’re going to put student voices in……..I won’t use their names. Any responses at all would help. Thank you so much,
Lisa

How does (or did) your teacher teach you to read?

List three things you know about good readers.

What do you dislike about reading in school?

Tell me about a time someone had to read out loud and they weren’t very good…..

If you could be in charge, what would you use to teach kids to read?

Last night, I sat down with one of our sons, nine-year old Isaac, and asked him Lisa’s questions. We conducted the interview using the Dragon Dictation app on our iPad. This app allowed us to speak in a conversational tone and then render the results as a text. It did take a little copy, paste and revision time to put together the follow-up email, but here are Isaac’s honest responses. [view full-size]

As I stated in my email to Lisa, I was particularly intrigued by his response to what he dislikes about reading in school. Isaac states,

You have to read independent and you can’t read out loud.

I wish I would have probed a litter deeper, but upon reflection,  I can’t help to wonder what Isaac means by you can’t read out loud? Does he want to read out loud? What type of format or setting would he be more comfortable with? I’ll have to conduct a follow-up conversation with Isaac for sure.