Teachers are constantly looking for ways to motivate students to become lifelong readers. But they often neglect to nurture that process themselves.
Dominican University, however, offers a course that focuses on changing that. The Reflective Reading course is for teachers who want to make a commitment to dedicating precious time to focused professional reading.
Choose a book to reflect on
The booklists for the course offer a wide variety of current nonfiction covering not only best practice curriculum guides, but books on current educational thought, Common Core techniques, athletic endeavors, content area information, special education, psychology, classroom management, inspiration and other compelling subjects of interest and assistance to teachers.
Assignments will include both written reflections and online discussions, according to instructor Ginny Horning.
This 15-hour course, according to Horning, is presented to encourage educators to carve out quality time for their own professional reading and to share that reading experience with the instructor and fellow teachers.
Additional sections of the EDUO 9000 course are also available for teachers who want to continue.
Reflective reading assignments
To complete assignments, teachers will choose a book to read in a focused and deliberate manner. Much like a book club, teachers will engage in forum discussions.
Teachers can check to see if someone else has started a discussion topic on their book. If so, they can reply to that post and perhaps have a discussion with that person.
Another alternative is to respond to someone who has read a different book. But a response should be thoughtful and reflective and demonstrate a reading and understanding of the comments of the classmate. The online assignments may be completed at any time before submitting written coursework. Although these three online assignments are the only required posts, they are encouraged.
Two offline written assignments are also required. One requires answering specific questions provided by the grader. The second is a three-to-five-page (double spaced) reflective review of the book.
The review covers the reader’s overall impression of the way the book is written, the teacher’s opinions of the ideas presented and specific thoughts on how to make use of them in the classroom and/or life.
Booklists
The booklists include engaging bestsellers, books trending today and popular teacher titles.
Each of the three Master List sections includes dozens of titles with books such as:
- Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire
- Confessions of a Bad Teacher
- The Happiness Project
- Twelve Years a Slave
- Unbroken
Reflective Reading may be taken for credit multiple times with multiple books. The first registration will be numbered EDUO 9000, the second EDUO 9002 and the third EDUO 9003… up to EDUO 9010.
Each course will extend the titles and subjects offered, including:
- Books Especially for Coaches
- Books on Current Social and Cultural Issues
- Classroom Instructional Methods and Strategies
- Books Focused on Special Needs
The credit offered for the courses is a graduate-level extension, meaning it is post-baccalaureate.
Credit is primarily utilized for professional growth or salary advancement. It is transferable to degree programs only on the approval of the institution being petitioned. Graduate Level Extension Semester Units are characterized by 15 hours of contact time per credit/unit, and are associated with a measure of knowledge assessment and/or skills implementation. The words credits and units are used interchangeably as geographical locations vary in terminology.
Sign up today and start reading.
