[etni] Students Get New Assignment: Pick Books You Like
- From: "Ask Etni" <ask@xxxxxxxx>
- To: "Etni" <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009 07:48:18 +0200
The Future of Reading
Students Get New Assignment: Pick Books You Like
The New York Times - August 30, 2009
JONESBORO, Ga. — For years Lorrie McNeill loved teaching “To Kill a
Mockingbird,” the Harper Lee classic that many Americans regard as a
literary rite of passage.
But last fall, for the first time in 15 years, Ms. McNeill, 42, did not
assign “Mockingbird” — or any novel. Instead she turned over all the
decisions about which books to read to the students in her seventh- and
eighth-grade English classes at Jonesboro Middle School in this south
Atlanta suburb.
Among their choices: James Patterson‘s adrenaline-fueled “Maximum Ride”
books, plenty of young-adult chick-lit novels and even the “Captain
Underpants” series of comic-book-style novels.
But then there were students like Jennae Arnold, a soft-spoken eighth grader
who picked challenging titles like “A Lesson Before Dying” by Ernest J.
Gaines and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, of which she wrote, partly in
text-message speak: “I would have N3V3R thought of or about something like
that on my own.”
The approach Ms. McNeill uses, in which students choose their own books,
discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep
detailed journals about their reading, is part of a movement to
revolutionize the way literature is taught in America’s schools. While there
is no clear consensus among English teachers, variations on the approach,
known as reading workshop, are catching on.
(To read the whole article, go to -
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/30reading.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
)
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