ABSTRACT
From soft, clay tablet to shining new technological tablet, there is an instructive continuity in how we read, as well as significant changes that every teacher can observe and learn from. Indeed, if we better learn the history of the story of reading, we will learn a great deal about how we read now, while envisioning some predictions about how we should do so in the future. Religious reading has dominated the developing history of reading, while also being intertwined with education and learning to read. The act of reading was synonymous with acts of worship, from reading the Bible, the Quran and the Torah – with Jewish families going on to explicitly celebrate ritual act of reading. In undertaking the act of strategic, careful close reading of academic texts, reading, taking notes, rereading and eking out new layers of meaning, our pupils begin to closely resemble their Sumerian ancestors and follow one of the greatest traditions in human history.
