Comments on: Summer reading – time to brainstorm

By: Konni

Konni — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 02:19:06 +0000

I’m not sure if you’ve heard of Alan Liu (Voice of the Shuttle http://vos.ucsb.edu/ ) and his ROSE (Research Oriented Social Environment), but ROSE is an on-going project that seeks to create profiles and FB-like walls for authors. http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/rose-research-oriented-social-environment-uc-santa-barbara/ He spoke at USC’s Center for Digital Humanities last fall.

By: Cathy Jo Nelson

Cathy Jo Nelson — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:33:21 +0000

I have found that required summer reading sometimes breeds resentment in students who particularly are not readers for pleasure. I understand why teachers make the assignments, and I see a rush of kids each August and Dec/Jan trying to check out the books on their list, so the practice of testing on the required reading is still a common practice, even in my own high school. Will these projects encourage more reading? I don’t know. But I do think that when students have a wider choice (in reading selection and in ways to demonstrate meeting that objective of reading) they are more inclined to participate. I don’t beleive a test is the be-all end-all way to prove reading occurred. Students have a wide array of talents, and by offering them interesting and engaging alternatives to a test may generate enough interest to get the job done. It also may help a high school student who is still struggling to define themselves or figure out what they want to do beyond high school develop that insight, all because they had some choices in how to demonstrate meeting an objective. I hope I answered your question here.

By: Katie

Katie — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 03:56:14 +0000

I am a future teacher, and just had a quick question? I love the idea of these projects! Do you think these projects or discussions work better than a test? Whenever I enrolled in an English Honors class, I would have to take a test on the book when the school year started. Do you see better results with the projects?

Thanks!