Journal #3 - High School Literacy - Voices from the Field - 1 views
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Michaela Klusman on 19 Feb 12Christine Cziko, a former high school English teacher, writes about a year-long undertaking that she was a part of that sought to transform students into capable readers. Her desire to do something about the lack of reading ability that her students exhibited came out of her concern about her students' apparent inability to read independently or to understand what they read. I was greatly impacted by this whole idea. I would LOVE to do something like this at my school. I have taught high school English at a private school where many common issues don't exist and I still had students not doing the reading or not understanding what they read. However, once we read CS Lewis' The Great Divorce (which is written at a very high level) they were engaged and devoured the difficult text. We would then come together and ask questions, discuss, and analyze the text. I didn't have to beg my students to read it, they WANTED to. One of the big differences was that I talked it up and let them know that it was going to be very difficult but that people would be impressed to know that they had read it in high school. They were so proud to have read, analyzed, and understood this difficult text.
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anonymous on 19 Feb 12This year my students read "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin. They absolutely loved the book and I had to beg them not to go ahead because doing so would spoil the ending. Teaching reading (or any subject matter) is so much more fun when the students are engaged. I wish we had these same experiences in everything we taught!