Oh, I love the realistic and practical wisdom in your approach to
helping reluctant readers. I have never set up a listening center.
My students have laptops and the internet so i am thinking a listening
center would be a snap! Anyone use one on one tech for setting up
listening activities around good lit!? I would think this would be a
project like activity with clear goals and expectations as well as a
formative assessment of sorts.
What say you? I am going for it! Maybe if anyone else is interested
in a Literature Listening goal for their students, we could use Google
doc and collaborate on the knitty gritty!
Jacquie
On Aug 29, 2009, at 11:30 AM, Alison wrote:
Yes, the Orca series books are excellent. Something I tried this
year for the first time with my Gr. 7's was a Listening centre. I
wasn't sure how they would receive it since it seemed like something
you would find in a junior class, however several of my students
LOVED it. One in particular, who was a self-proclaimed reading
hater, got through several books this way. Freak the Mighty
(Philbrick), Bang! (Sharon Flake), Artemis Fowl (Colfer) and
Touching Spirit Bear (Mikaelsen).
I haven't read Blizzard's Wake but I am interested in the two
character perspective. This reminds me of other great reads that
have chapters with different "voices" such as Tears of a Tiger
(Draper) and Egghead (Pignat). Egghead is phenomenal as the
voice of the boy who is being severely bullied is written in poetry
and extremely touching.
Other Grade 7 reads that work for the tough ones include: Peak
(Roland Smith) and I am a Taxi (Deb Ellis)
I have to add that the best way I have found to get reluctant
readers into is to set it up for them. If you simply hand them a
book and say "you will like it" isn't enough. Instead you have to
set it up for them. Read the first chapter, talk about some of the
issues the will encounter in the book, connect it to their life
somehow. This seriously means you have to read the book before they
do. They have to trust you.
Enjoy!
On 28-Aug-09, at 11:09 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
For three years I have taught a 'tracked' below level 7th grade
English class. We read "Blizzard's Wake" by Phyllis Naylor. It is
a novel set in 1941 in Oklahoma just before Pearl Harbor is
attacked. There is a famous blizzard that comes down from Canada
in March of 1941. So the setting is realistic and historical. The
blizzard is true enough and so is that part of America just before
we enter WWII. My low kids loved, loved the novel. The gist is
about a guy who is released from prison for good behav
ior. He was jailed for driving drunk and killing the main
character's mother. He returns to the town where it happened. The
book is in chapter form and each chapter switches back and forth
between the girl and the man, their thoughts, their own isolation;
one from guilt and the other from anger. The suspense builds when
the girl's father, a doctor, is caught in the blizzard with her
younger brother and Zeke, the man, climbs into the car. The family
saves his life and there is a twist to this that expla
ins the girl's anger and hate for Zeke. There is even a sort of
reconciliation at the end that is believable.
Wonderful discussions even though I read most of it to them. As
they got into it, more and more of them started reading it on their
own. And whether or not you think students should be tracked,
these student started to risk having opinions and thinking more
critically then they ever had before. In a regular class they
would be intimidated by the higher students who do all the talking.
Anyway, I am going to use the novel in my CORE class this year. It
is easy to read except you need to bring the historical events into
the story and talk about life without television or cell phones.
Some vocabulary preview / teaching is needed, but that is not a bad
thing.
Just a thought.
---- [email protected] wrote:
We do a lot of shared reading so I don't really need the high
interest low
readability books as much as books with good plots, but not overly
complicated ones.
Pat
www.pawsofwood.com
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