Artifacts+of+Growth+and+Progress

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Excerpt from RPP
Connections to Readings My sessions with Allison made several connections to the reading we have done in class. On the social level, my sister communicates well in class when discussing the literature. She appears to be proficient in comprehending the text and listening to the opinions of others. When we discussed the poem “Fat is Not a Fairytale”, she explained to me how she thought the poem was discussing the pressures on young girls to feel as though they need to be thin. She related this to how she and her friends often discuss how they feel fat or need to lose weight. She seems to typically approach a text through a reader response lens, always relating what she reads back to her own life and what she can take from it. On the cognitive level, Allison, is able to understand texts deeper than face value. She is able to make connections with metaphors and imagery in the books she reads, and has no trouble writing about her observations. I worked with her on one of her school assignments in which she was asked to give examples of metaphors in Macbeth, and she was able to pick out examples on her own, without asking me for assistance or if it was a correct example. Text-based reading instruction does not seem to work very well for Allison. If the learning is based primarily on questions directly from the book, she is unable to connect the themes to a greater importance. On a personal level, Allison can only relate to a book if she can make connections to her own life. It would be useful for her in a classroom to have a teacher show a film with themes similar to the book they are studying so she is able to make connections to how the themes of the book and film are important to her own life. She does not want to devote time and thinking to a story if she has to look at it from an entirely text-based perspective. I want to help her take text-based learning to a more personal level. To do this, I have tried to give her books with characters and settings she is able to imagine or place herself in. She seemed eager to try to read The Hunger Games, but after reading three pages, she told me she didn’t think she would like it. I encouraged her to keep reading and try to give it more of a chance, but I know that if she can’t make those connections on her own, she will decide just to go see the movie instead, where she can absorb the same knowledge and information, but in a way that gives her more immediate gratification.

Steps That Can Be Taken In order to help readers like Allison in a classroom, I think the following activities would be beneficial: - Reading the canonical text as a class Allowing students to pick their own books with themes similar to the canonical text. Instead of asking questions about the books students choose, ask questions about the main ideas of the canonical text and how they relate to other books students have read Use film clips to encourage visualization and link common themes Have students act out scenes from the books