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!