Monday, June 06, 2005

Extensive reading

On a more positive note, I have instituted an extensive reading program in one of my classes. Last week we took a tour of the library. Most of the students hadn't been there since orientation. The English books are in this hard to find section of the stacks. I think they will last a long time there because the oxygen is limited in that space. Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, we all read one book together, just for practice. Then I had them write a very short, one or two-sentence, review of it. I'll be putting the students' comments up on my web site at the university soon. I'll include a link to it when I get it done.

On Wednesday last week, as one group wrote their evaluations of the first book, the other group went down to the stacks with me and selected another book for them to read. I showed them how to check books out and so on.

Some of their comments were better than others, but on the average, they were very positive about the exercise.

Today we spent a few minutes reading at the end of class. Most of the class had finished the books they checked out earlier, and some of them finished them today. Very few of them were still reading by the end of class, and those were the people who had checked out something that was too difficult.

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