Reading Next Activity

1.) Biancarosa and Snow's ideas and principles in Reading Next reminded me of the International Reading Association's (IRA) Adolescent Literacy: A Position Statement the most; also, the heavy focus on comprehension shared a clear connection with Gunning's Chapter 8: "Comprehension: Text Structures and Teaching Procedures" and even McKenna's Chapter 3: "Getting to Know Your Students, Your Materials, & Your Teaching". Both the IRA's position statement and Reading Next make it quite clear that the country's excessive high school dropout rates are tied to the ignored literary difficulties faced by the growing number of secondary students. In order to decrease these excessive rates, both texts are favorable of an approach that is committed to making adolescents ready for their future as literate (young) adults; the IRA suggests that "adolescents preparing for the 21st century deserve new forms of collaboration among educators. Community colleges, technical schools, and universities can offer input and assistance" and Reading Next notes that "the goal in improving adolescent literacy should...[be] to envision what improvements will be necessary to prepare tomorrow's youth for the challenges they will face twenty and thirty years from now." In both Gunning and McKenna's chapters 8 and 3, respectively, there are differentiated instruction strategies that align with the elements found in Reading Next. All relevant to settings beyond school, Gunning's chapter 8 is full of instructional tips to help students recognize expository texts, engage in text discussions, and comprehensive reading strategies students can use both independently and dependently. McKenna's chapter 3 asserts the importance of summative and formative assessments in order to improve the literacy of students, also an element found in the reform proposed by Reading Next. Finding the readability of course texts and the reading ability of the students is necessary to address the sixth element in Reading Next, which is finding diverse texts with varying difficulty levels and topics.

2.) Text-based collaborative learning will be used by having regular class discussions about the various texts I would want the students to read. Screenplays, novels, short story anthologies, plays, graphic novels, journal articles, among other texts, will be discussed. Inquiry and multi-genre projects are two more ways to assess how students comprehend a text and work in groups. Performing selected scenes from plays is another way students can work and learn together. Diverse texts will be measured according to the different readability estimating tools we have encountered throughout the course, including Raygor and Lexile. By surveying the students at the beginning of the year about what topics interest them and keeping an open dialogue about what they enjoy, I can use the information to help make course readings fun and exciting. Intensive writing in my classroom will prepare students for the real world. Because there are so many freelance writing jobs, students should be writing well enough to write about the topics that interest them and make a living from it if they wanted to. It would be interesting to work on developing an English/Language Arts class newspaper that could be circulated around the community, not just the school. This would create the opportunity for valuable feedback for the students from local film/book/theater critics, community members and other educators. I can't wait to find more ways to incorporate these elements into my teaching when I finally get a classroom!

Blog #7: Two Websites for Use (Theater)

According to the National Standards for Theatre Education, grades 9-12, students are expected to demonstrate "acting by developing, communicating, and sustaining characters in improvisations and informal or formal productions". The websites below are resources for students to find monologue material for class workshops, auditions, and the like.

1) Monologue Archive is a solid collection of comedic, dramatic and classical monologues for men and women. Though the monologues for men outnumber those for women, this website would expose students to a number of unfamiliar playwrights. The hope is that student will go to a library, or most likely online, to find more works by the playwrights included on the website. When you click on a monologue, not only is there the text of the monologue piece, but related links that take you to bibliographies, biographies, and some collections of the writer's work, if in the public domain. Because most auditions will ask an actor for a classical AND a contemporary monologue, it is necessary that students work on developing characters from a different time period. Students are most familiar with Shakespeare's verse, but this website includes pieces by Euripides, Christopher Marlowe, Sophocles and many more. Decent monologues can be extraordinarily hard to find, but this website is a helpful start to any actor in search pieces to add to their monologue portfolio.

2.) I also found a series of videos on www.ehow.com titled "How to Find a Monologue for Auditions". The thirteen video hosted by Dr. Charles Grimes. Although I am not a fan of how Grimes monotonously and somewhat uncomfortably presents his information, these videos are short and there are valuable tips for every step of the audition process. If Grimes' tedious speech patterns are too much for the viewer, there are actually transcripts of each video below the comments section. In the video below, Grimes acknowledges that (casting) directors tire of hearing the same popular monologues over and over, then proceeds to drop the names of playwrights I've never even heard of! Becoming worldly theater students would help them to impress theater directors in higher education, professional theaters and beyond. Other video titles in the series include "How to Relieve Stress Before a Monologue Audition" and "How to Be Creative in a Monologue", which are topics that should be addressed as early as possible when students are learning about the audition process and preparatory methods for a role. This site will help students cast a wider net when searching for perfect monologues for themselves and hopefully find plays that they would like the school's drama club to produce one day.

Good Authors for Monologues -- powered by ehow

Blog #6: Video meets poetry

Question: Is it possible to combine poetry and film to extend students' comprehension of poems?

Answer: Unbeknownst to me, there is actually an extensive collection of beautiful poetry films, or video poetry, that exists. Poets, such as former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, pair the readings of their works with short animations, which makes for a surprisingly intriguing form of entertainment. One poem by Collins in particular, "Hunger", was used by FAD to create a very creepy video that I've watched at least seven times. Without ever having read the poem before watching the video, the images helped me understand that the poem was about loneliness and the feelings of delusion that come with success. This is the type of literary comprehension aid students should be exposed to in the classroom.

This new multimedia discovery has made me realize that having a B.A. in Film and Media Studies will definitely come in handy while teaching in a secondary English classroom. Three years ago, I actually made a short film based on a poem written by a close friend of mine. My professor didn't tell us we had to make a short film based on a poem; however, writing action based on text already rich with imagery inspired me. I'm positive that bringing a multimedia assessment to stimulate a poetry unit would be welcome and enlightening, considering I have a list of past instructors who have made it quite boring.

Other than my personal experience with pairing poetry and film, I was doubtful I would find a scholarly model I could base this unit on. Luckily, a group of University of Cambridge postgraduate students seeking certification in Secondary English and Drama participated in a workshop where they used "camcorders as notebooks for the study of poetry". When Gabrielle Cliff Hodges, author of the journal article documenting this teaching session, found that this activity was very rewarding in the scheme of English and Media studies. Hodges and I both agree that "the requirement to use the camcorder as a notebook relieves the pressure of making a complete film but still offers valuable insights into areas of knowledge and understanding in media education." Using a camcorder to turn the text into "moving images" with a group of peers is a much more exciting task than sitting at a desk dissecting a poem for an entire class period. The most fun part of using this in my classroom would be seeing the different films that are born out of a single piece of text.

The teachers in training that took part in the workshop were satisfied with their collaborative experiences, and found a multitude of reasons why using a camcorder is rewarding when studying poetry. In my opinion, the most poignant reflection was by Deborah, who stated "filming draws attention to the way in which the poem may have relevance in the modern world. Using images from daily life encourages you to make the connection between the poem and modern concerns." The poem used in the workshop was Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott", which is almost 200 years old and a piece most of them had encountered before. However, the students were able to use images from the modern world to help them understand the poet's diction, symbolism and narrative techniques in a refreshing way. Exploring Whitman and Dickinson with media integration would equip students with tools attack texts they would otherwise be intimidated by.

Hodges, G.C. (2005) The poem, the reader and the camera: Using camcorders as notebooks for the study of poetry. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 4(1), 70-80.