Chapter 9

Chapter 9
1. When material is too difficult, students cannot construct meaning or flexibly use reading strategies. Students will become flustered and decrease their attention, and just try to make “sense” of the words.
a. I learned this the hard way during my first year of teaching in high school. I was given a list of novels I could teach for each grade level. I taught 10th grade inclusion classes, so the reading level of many of my students was very low. But according to the curriculum, I had no choice but to begin the school year with Lord of the Flies, which most of my students enjoyed, but it was very difficult for some of my special education students to read on their own. We struggled through a lot of books last year, but I think in the end it gave a lot of my lower level students a confidence boost.

2. Some publishers are taking classics, such as novels by Jack London, and are re-writing them so that a lot of different readers can enjoy the books.
a. While having a lower level text of Lord of the Flies would have definitely helped some of my students, I am not sure that I agree with this practice. A lot of the texts publishers are doing this with are classics, and many can be considered a form of art. I am not saying that I don’t want lower level readers to have access to a wide range of texts, but the book lover in me just can’t stomach this practice. Either way, I probably would have sucked it up and just taken the lower level format of LOTF and used it.

3. Using a 300 word passage and deleting 50 words is a good way to match a reader to a text. The reader has to fill in the blanks with words that he thinks will make sense.
a. I really like this method because it seems like it can also serve as a good literacy strategy and not just a way to match books to readers. For instance, if we are in the middle of a novel, I could delete some dialogue between characters and have the students fill them in using their knowledge of the characters. I tried doing the one in the textbook, and it was even a little bit of a challenge, so I think this would be a great strategy for students.

4. If the topic and story line is engaging, then the book is usually easier to read.
a. This is so hard to pull off in a general education classroom. At the end of last year, the only book that was available for me to teach was A Separate Peace – and if you know anything about this novel then you know an urban population isn’t going to take too well to a text about private school kids. It was such a terror getting through it that I never want to see that book again! On the other hand, I feel that my 11th graders really liked MacBeth and The Great Gatsby because there was a lot of action and drama in them.
5. One of the best ways to determine interest is by letting students choose the book they want to read.
a. This is another very difficult strategy to pull off in a general education classroom, but it has been done well before. Lit circles were a great success in high school. The class was divided into several groups, and each group had their own novel that they all chose. Each student in the group usually had a different task, and there was a list of questions that could pertain to all of the books that they needed to answer. This was incredibly interactive and supported a wide range of literacy skills.