Friday, February 16, 2007
Connecting kids' lives to the books they read
Reading Vasquez’s book forced me to think about ways I can include critical literacy in my high school classroom. Since my students read at different levels, I intend to use a variety of books such as Yo, Yolanda, Lost Boys of Sudan, First Jobs: Life After High School, Hip Hop Heroes, for my lower level readers and books like Derek Jeter, The Greatest: Mohammed Ali, Speak, Gloria Estefan, Esperanza Rising, Monster, and Slam! for my higher level readers. These are books that are written by a variety of women and men from various socio-economic and racial backgrounds about issues that are relevant to my students’ lives or their community. I hope to use these texts to help my students connect their individual experiences, knowledge, and perspectives to the social and political issues addressed in those texts. Since a large majority of my students are struggling readers, I have to use various teaching materials that represent the perspectives of individuals that relate to my students’ lives.
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2 comments:
Sounds wonderful. I'd love to hear more in future posts!
thanks
vivian
Have you ever thought to let the students pick the book? Give them a choice, or better yet an idea and let them do the choosing. I know that these books seem like things that the students would like, but you may be surprised, some of your students might like something else. They would be excited to read something that they choose.
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