Vicki Cobb on Reading to Learn

ENVIRONMENTAL & SCIENCE EDUCATION
Edward Hessler

By Moini [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

A few days ago Diane Ravitch pointed me to an article by Vicki Cobb, a prolific non-fiction science author for children, that is worth reading. It is about reading to learn, the other side of learning to read or why one learns to read.

Vicki Cobb begins by writing "A retired public elementary school principal recently told me that the rule in education used to be that grades 1-3 were about learning to read. After that, it was reading to learn. But that's not happening today with the current emphasis on ELA skills through the Common Core State Standards. The emphasis is on skills. There is nothing about content. Content matters. You can't teach critical thinking without thinking about something. Nonfiction literature gives readers something to think about."

Yup!