Revising my Reading by: Leila Mohajer

One thing that I regret not doing more of in middle school is reading. I have always loved to read, I just never went out of my way to do so. Now, as a freshman in high school, I read more than I ever have before. Here’s why.

In my English class, we recently finished reading the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and the whole class loved it. We would return to class every day discussing the crazy events that took place in the three chapters that we had read the night before for homework. It was an excellent book choice for us and it kept us engaged throughout the whole read. However, reading the book for homework each night would not have been the same without the additional packet that we filled out with it.

The packet that we filled out was called the “Critical Eye” and would allow us to be more in depth with the book while reading it. We had one packet for every three chapters. The Critical Eye would have us write about two parts of the book where we saw the theme of the book developing or to list a key character development and analysis on the character. It truly changed the way I read books because now I think about these questions as I’m reading and it helps me to understand books better.
When the whole class had finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird, our teacher gave us a lecture on the allegory and word choice used in the novel. The whole class was shocked about the things that we had not picked up while reading. For example, a mockingbird is an innocent bird providing good music through purity, kindness, and innocence. The mockingbird represents a main character in the book that was killed even though he was innocent. Hence the title, “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Now when reading, I actually understand why authors use specific words or actions within the text.

These two assignments got me to enjoy reading so much more. I think it would be great if all teachers did things like Critical Eye and gave lectures about allegory in their class books, because it helps students to understand what they are reading so much better.

Try some of these with your students and see if they like it!