Classroom context, continued
For Mr. Ford, a typical assignment was similar, though he might do some guided discussion or other introductory activities to get students thinking about the big ideas of a text before reading it, and instead of questions he would have students write "reading summaries." For instance, students began the year by reading a "translated" version of Beowulf that Mr. Ford further abridged in three versions for students of different abilities. Students then rewrote the text line by line in their own words as they read. Both teachers expressed their conviction that students would not read without these measures in place to enforce reading. It thus became one of my teaching goals to try different active reading strategies to encourage student reading in a less restrictive (and hopefully less interest-killing) format.
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I saw little evidence of students extending beyond the bare minimum asked of them in terms of reading and writing in either class (though I did see student literacy expressed outside of the classroom as the year progressed). For instance, in my 10th grade classroom, if one section of a text was highlighted with an attached comment box but the question required students to consider the text beyond the highlighted passage, students regularly skipped these questions or answered them incorrectly with the information from only the highlighted passage. They frequently expressed to me that they only read the sections that required reading to answer a question, and skipped the sections of a text that was not highlighted.
In Ms. Ricci's intervention period, a study hall period where students were expected to catch up on their homework, I was able to interact with students and observe them in a more informal setting. At the beginning of the year I was frustrated by the fact that students used this period only to use their phones, listen to music, and watch videos once assigned laptops. |
I tried to counteract this by bringing in word games and creating an "Information Station" with regularly replenished local publications. Ms. Ricci and I also began using these magazines in the classroom, handing them out to students who finished work early. However, this never quite caught on, and students showed little interest in reading these or other material during their down time. A group of students did enjoy the "Haikubes" game I brought in, though, and played with it regularly during intervention. This was at least in part (I was told) because many of the words in the game were body parts and it allowed them to create fairly salacious poetry (see example above).