Level 2»3: From engaged to exploratory reading
Transition 3.1 | From enthusiastic reading to extending reading interests | |
---|---|---|
Focus | Broadening students’ reading interests | |
Goals | Teacher activities | Student activities |
Broaden one’s knowledge and understanding of the world by reading. | Offer texts that throw a new light on subjects the students are interested in (for example, Second World War, Greek Myths, new media). Encourage students to use literature for gaining more in-depth knowledge of subjects, and help them choose books. |
Explore books that fit specific interests and use these to gain a more in-depth knowledge of the subject. |
Broaden one’s knowledge and understanding of the world by reading. | Work with other teachers in order to integrate reading with other subjects such as history, geography, foreign languages, etc. | Read non-fiction on the same subject as well. Present and discuss view of the subject, also referring to new insights and what students may have learned. |
Explore and reflect upon ethical and moral issues that arise from texts. | Promote discussions in class about the moral dilemmas arising from the texts. Select suitable extracts from texts and encourage students to talk about them. Approach the dilemmas from different perspectives. |
Reflect upon and discuss moral issues in the books; take a standpoint. |
Define the topics that stimulate the student to read a book. | Encourage students to give a personal response to what they read – why they liked or disliked a certain book in relation to the experiences or knowledge it provided. | Place personal response to the book in the context of one’s knowledge of the world and self. |
Broadening interest in different genres. | Schedule student presentations about what they have read. | Read popular genres (adventure, fantasy, diary, etc.) and give a presentation to peers. |
Broadening interest in different genres. | Broaden the scope of reading and guide the students towards new genres. | Explore and explain experiences with different literary genres recommended by the teacher or peers (growing-up/ adolescence novel, allegoric narrative, etc.). |
Broadening interest in different genres. | Ask about reading experiences in order to clarify the students’ criteria for choosing books and to establish reading aims. | Reflect on special or new experiences during the reading process. |
Develop an interest in new titles and developments in youth literature. | Show interest in recent literature for teenagers and provide information about what is new in this field. | Become familiar with popular contemporary authors from home and abroad. |
Transition 3.2 | From engaging in the story to exploring different layers of meaning | |
Focus | Modelling text exploration | |
Goals | Teacher activities | Student activities |
Distinguish and deal with multiple storylines. | Encourage students to see different storylines and distinguish between them by providing specific tasks (e.g. cause and effect, chronology of events). | Learn to deal with multiple storylines that are not always explicitly interconnected. |
Develop imagination and learn to read the text closely. | Encourage students to anticipate what is going to happen in different storylines or to fill in the gaps in the text. | Anticipate the story development based on the information the text offers. Re-structure the storyline if the narrative is built on flashbacks or time-shifts. |
Recognize the role of narrative techniques. | Draw on students’ possibly unconscious, knowledge of narrative techniques as used in the visual media, such as films, TV series, comic strips and games. Provide texts that explicitly illustrate the effect of narrative techniques. |
Give examples of how narrative techniques are used in familiar audiovisual media. Explore the function and effect of flashbacks, foreshadowing and time-shifts in texts. Recognize narrative techniques in literary texts and reflect on their purpose and effect. |
Deal with unfamiliar words/expressions. | Provide strategies to evaluate whether a word or expression is necessary to understand the text and to work out the meaning (e.g. from context, from word formation, etc.) | Read texts containing unfamiliar words or expressions and use suitable strategies to understand their meaning. |
Deal with complex phrases. | Provide strategies to process complex phrases, e.g. by demonstrating what experienced readers do when facing difficult texts: re-reading a phrase, establish relations between main and sub clause, look for pronouns and what they refer to, re-phrase the whole phrase; make use of the think-aloud-method to demonstrate. | Take time to process complex phrases and become aware of textual complexities; use suitable strategies as demonstrated by teacher. |
Reconstruct the development of a character. | Help students place the development of the characters on a chronological axis, which includes their relationships with others. | Reflect on the characters’ personalities; follow their development by looking at their actions and thoughts, as well as their relationships with others. |
Become aware of different layers of meaning in the text. | Help students identify the different layers of meaning in the text (social, psychological, historical) by, for example, showing how knowledge of the historical context helps to understand the behaviour of the character. | Construct historical, psychological and social lines and explain the different meanings that other readers can see in the text. |
Reflect critically on character behaviour. | Ask students to take on the character’s shoes and express their opinion on this. | Speak or write about one’s own reaction in the same situation. |
Experiment with different narrative techniques. | Offer creative tasks that provide an understanding of narrative techniques (e.g. open ending, switching perspective, flashback, etc.). Evaluate students’ products in terms of the effects of narrative techniques. |
Experiment with different narrative techniques by writing narratives and adapting them to other media (e.g. films, comic strips) to see the effect. |