NLGL Creative Synthesis
Chelsea Stilley
Hooking Young Readers
One goal I set at the beginning of my first year teaching (9 years ago) was to ensure that our students have fun, authentic learning opportunities. I want to see excitement and collaboration as students problem-solve. This vision seems so simple, but in reality, it is a lot of work! In ECI 541: Reading in the Content Areas with Dr. Huffman, I created an SRE Project focused on Social Justice Poetry; which would later help launch our Social Justice literature circles.
Tea party is a great way to hook middle school students and get them excited about reading. Unfortunately,students’ motivation to read begins to decline in middle school. As a middle school ELA teacher, I strive to find engaging activities to reverse this statistic. I have learned how important it is to tap into a student’s schema, as well as brainstorming and sharing our personal experiences (Vacca et al., p.147).
To launch our ‘Lit. Circles’ I hosted a book tasting. I decorated the classroom as a restaurant, which included tablecloths, paper place mats and menus for them to fill out based on what books they are interested in. The menu had a QR-code that linked to the book trailer. The novels were placed in the center of their tables, so the students could view the covers and read a few pages. The students loved our book tasting and were wanting to take their first choice book home after class!
