Written by A bit of a disclaimer: I had an idea of posting her some initial musings about what directions this novel study was going to go in; however, I have yet to unveil this complete plan to my students (it is certainly in draft form) and I have recently discovered (much to my delight) that a few of my students have stumbled upon my blog (hi girls)! I love that a few of the Grade 7 girls are reading this and are peeking in to see what their teacher is writing about, but I also don’t want to reveal things too soon. Or should I just put some initial thoughts up and allow these curious young people to also offer their suggestions (I mean, if they are going to the trouble of reading this, maybe it would be great to have them also share their perspectives). Girls? What do you think? Thoughts from the Cohort? Okay, back to the share:
Garth suggested after my last post about audiobooks and I just wanted to riff off that (!) for a moment. My Grade 7 readers are all at varying reading levels, so to help scaffold this challenging text some students have elected (or have been suggested) to read the text along with the audiobook. Some students have also seen the movie over the winter break, which has allowed a good boost in background knowledge and eased their ability to connect emotionally with what they are reading (other English teachers, I’m curious what your take on books made into movies are. Can you stop students from watching the movie? Does it matter? Is it useful? Or do you find it just distracts?). At Klingenstein, one of my favourite lecturers, Dr. Kelley Nicholson Flynn, explained that when cognitive working memory is freed up, thinking can actually occur. If our brain is bogged down with trying to make sense of the story or decode that weird new word, it is much harder to make meaningful connections with what we are reading.
Support through audiobooks on iTunes may not seem like a truly transformative practice (and maybe it isn’t) but it’s a little drop in the bucket that can amount to great things down the road.