Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Topic: Motivating Basic Readers and Writers in College

10-second review: Uses a theme and short stories, writing and reading, to motivate both writing and reading.

Title: “Bringing Life to Reading and Writing for At-risk College Students.” CM Chamblee. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 1998), 532-537. A publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).

Summary: Theme was stages in life: childhood, early adolescence, later adolescence and adulthood. Students read short stories related to each stage. Before reading, students responded in writing to the teacher’s prompt related to the story and the stage in life.

Following reading, students responded in writing to an open-ended prompt “…that asked them to write about their opinions of the text, their personal life experiences evoked by reading the text, the relationship of the text to other texts they had read, and the message of the text and how it would be generalized to life.” p. 534.

Next came group discussion.

At the end of each stage of life, students added to their autobiographies.

Comment: Worth a try. Will take some preparation. Will need to find the stories. But that should be fun. Begin with your anthologies. Have some questions about how to grade this in the context of teaching students how to read and write. Sorry, but grading is a reality. RayS.

This blog, English Education Archives, reviews articles of contemporary interest from past English education journals.

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