Chloe's Chapter 5

Phew…this chapter really relieved a lot of the tension I was feeling with the authors’ ambiguous statements, and not much concrete advice for teachers.  I see now that they are not simply recommending that teachers change their texts.  I guess for the last four chapters that’s exactly what I feared.  I feared this because each student has a different interest, and so changing texts seemed like it wouldn’t solve any problems. 

 In this chapter, they mention that teachers need to enhance student interest in texts by front-loading and this is an idea that I can really get behind. This is similar to what I do in the listening and speaking class I teach.  I do this for exactly the same reason.  The listenings are based on random topics that not all students find compelling.  By showing them how these ideas connect to their lives, they are more willing to complete the listening and the post-listening activities.

In many ways this idea of creating connections reminds me of McCormick.  She mentions that teachers should help students relate to texts that come from a different historical time period by showing them how the past and present relate and are not so different.  She talks about it as historically situating the students.  This seems like an idea that Smith and Wilhelm would like, and could use.

One point of note that I want to discuss is about engaging students through proper instruction.  As they are discussing the students who enjoyed “My Sister’s Marriage,” they discuss the notion of how to engage more students. They say that “even more could be engaged with appropriate instruction – instruction that attends to the conditions of flow experience and that provides assistance in ways of reading that Vygotskian educators would endorse” (p.175).  I agree with teaching students through flow and engaging as many students as possible, but I wonder if haing done more instruction for this story would have disengaged more students.  In earlier chapters, Smith and Wilhelm make the point that the boys see the activities done in class as draining.  I wonder, am I contradicting myself? Or, is it okay to sometimes say, “Well, I didn’t engage everyone, but at least some of the students connected with this?” Or could we find a middle ground: teach and foreground some stories, and let students read for enjoyment on other stories?