In author Dan Feigelson's new book, Reading Projects Reimagined, he shows us how conference-based, individual reading projects help students learn to think for themselves. In today's blog, Feigelson demonstrates how to get a student to “say more” about a book.
The video below was shown during Feigelson’s NCTE14 presentation where he shared two strategies a teacher can use to help students recognize, name, and extend their own lines of thinking about their reading. First, choose the most interesting thing a student says and ask them to say more about it, and ask it more than once; second, name the type of idea they are having so that they can take it to the next book, and the book after that. In the video, we see Feigelson demonstrate these strategies with 6th grader Silas. When he names what the young reader is doing, Silas responds by saying more. This process deepens his thinking and gives Silas a feeling of ownership. Take a look:
Reading Projects Reimagined by Dan Feigelson
A s you can see, the resulting, rigorous reading project is based on the student's own idea - he has a hand in negotiating the assignment, thus giving a feeling of ownership. Click here if you would like to read a sample chapter of Reading Projects Reimagined or learn more about the book.