Reading Strategy Overload?

Sorry about the dearth of Reading Club posts.   My cousin, Posterious has been putting me to shame lately.  However, shame can be a great motivator.  At any rate, there is a great article in the March 2011 issue of Educational Leadership, entitled, "Let Strategies Serve Literature."  Our library subscribes to the magazine and I've placed a copy on the faculty bulletin board for your perusal.

March 2011 | Volume 68 | Number 6
What Students Need to Learn    Pages 52-56

Let Strategies Serve Literature

Diana Senechal

Reading strategies are helpful guides—but we should keep students' attention on the literature.

Suppose someone tells you that the way to peel a fruit is to break the stem and pull away the skin. You find that this works well with bananas and you adjust it for oranges. Then you discover that it doesn't work with apples; you need a paring instrument, or perhaps you need not peel it at all. The skin is scrumptious, as it turns out. With melons, you hit a new obstacle. You can't peel them or bite into them; they must be cut open. But it's worth it— especially for cantaloupes! When you come to pomegranates, the original method slips your mind in your eagerness to try the fruit—look at those dark gems, those rivulets of red.

Eventually, you develop methods of getting into any fruit that depend on what you know and what you can intuit. The original strategy applied to a few fruits only—which is fine because it wasn't a grand theory, just a means to the fruit itself.

...Over the past few decades, a scenario like the latter has become a common way for many students to partake of literature...Reading strategies, taugth carefully, can help readers make sense of literature. But when the literature is subordinated to strategies...

Truly, it's a compelling read about the need for using reading strategies effectively.  Look it over when you get a chance and post a reaction or two here.