Dear Families,
This week, I read this great Op-Ed from the Hechinger Report about “socially responsible social reading” in college classes. It explored the various applications of a new approach to reading assignments on college campuses, one in which students read a text “together” online, adding shared annotations, reactions, and comments to a single document, in essence, crowd-sourcing the comprehension and reflection of a single reading assignment. It’s a lovely example of education practices evolving alongside social practices. Assigned reading meets the Twitter feed.
I’m always interested in learning about the ways reading and reading instruction evolve as our kids grow, and the article highlighted the many ways students on college campuses consume reading materials–digital readers, paper copies, audiobooks, and combined platforms. It’s important for us here at Pilot to keep this plurality of options in mind as we develop capable and independent readers.
Of course, all of this seemed so apropos for our next and final Book Club book, Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf. The book chronicles the development of reading in the mind and the evolution of reading in society. The Hechinger Report article was a perfect manifestation of that evolution. I hope to see many of you at the Book Club. If we get lucky with nice weather, maybe we’ll take our wine and hors d’oeuvres outdoors for this final installment!
If you celebrate Passover or Easter, I wish you and your family a joyful celebration this weekend.
Warmly,
Alli
