Beyond book reports: How to spread a contagious love of reading
Empower gifted students to engage literature in a new way
Classroom Zero: Where the reading infection begins
Like any good zombie virus, a contagious love of reading has to have several phases:
Infection– The “aha” moment in which a student first makes a personal connection to a literary character or theme- Spread– The synergistic transference of one student’s interpretation of the text and connection to another student. Once you start getting advanced level responses to literature, there’s no stopping the infection!
- Mutation– The creative process that blazes endlessly, interconnected neural highways and gives the infectious love of reading infinite new modes to transmit itself to others and to change readers forever.
Take your students beyond book reports and offer them an infectious love of reading with the practical, innovative tools you’ll find in “Thinking Outside the Book,” a one-hour course that distills the personal best-practices of Sheila Mulbry and Nicole Shannon.
For the past 18 years, Sheila Mulbry has served as a TAG Resource Specialist for Round Rock ISD. Ms. Mulbry currently serves on the Education Committee for the Texas Association for the Gifted & Talented (TAGT).
Nicole Shannon has over 18 years of experience in gifted education. She currently serves as the Coordinator of Gifted/Advanced Academic Services for Round Rock ISD and taught in the district for 10 years before taking the position.
Step 1) Infection: Creating a viral idea breeding ground with your assignments
“Thinking Outside the Book” is a hotbed of highly transmittable ideas that will get you comfortable using a variety of traditional and contemporary media to push gifted students into deeper literary responses that go beyond bland book report assignments.
Ms. Mulbry and Ms. Shannon offer ways to create engaging, multi-faceted assignments that will have students transferring and mutating their love of reading with each new class period, using assignments like:
- Using mysteries in literature
- Developing puzzle fiction projects
- Creating personal response papers
- Identifying themes and vocabulary in literature
- Tying a book in with a movie and a natural issue in society
- Creating public service announcements
Step 2) Spread: Broadening the love of reading to all areas of a learner’s life
Going a step beyond book reports, Ms. Mulbry and Ms. Shannon develop complex responsive assignments that tie a book with a movie and a natural issue in society.
For example, after reading Regarding the Bees,they might tie in Spellbound, a film about spelling bees.
“From there we study bees, and the students have to understand the nature of society of bees and also learn of the issue of colony collapse disorder. They look at the economic impact that bees actually have in society. Then we watch the Bee Movie and they get to do a wonderful critique of the movie and point out all the mistakes. As we all know gifted children love to point out others’ mistakes; So they are very good at being able to point out everything they did wrong in the movie and find it very quickly. The next thing to task them with is to pay it forward… to ask the students to have people help the bees,” – Trainers Ms. Mulbry and Ms. Shannon
Dynamic assignment clusters, like this one, push gifted students to develop not only a love of reading, but even-deeper personal and critical responses to literature and a broad range of media and social issues.
Step 3) Mutation: Transforming your assignments for today’s gifted learners
Technology, Internet culture, and timeless literature blend seamlessly in several of the assignments that Ms. Mulbry and Ms. Shannon develop in the course. In an assignment focused on themes and vocabulary in literature, for example, students can utilize websites like www.Wordle.net to create word pictures of the main themes in a story (see image below).
Are you ready to infect your students?
“Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.”
― Jane Yolen, Author of “The Devil’s Arithmetic”
Like most things in life, the love of reading is best instilled when our gifted students are young. Going beyond a book report is a bridge that will lead to a lifetime of reading.
Delivering Quality Training – No Matter Where You Are
Did you know that this course is mobile ready? That means you can complete the course on your smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop computer, or any other mobile device!
Photos courtesy of flickr via futureatlas.com, US Department of Education, & Archives New Zealand
