Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Deeper Reading Chapter 1
The book titled Deeper Reading by Kelly Gallagher begins by comparing reading to understanding the game of baseball. This may seem like an awkward analogy, but once you begin reading the chapter it makes perfect sense. Gallagher states that most people understand the basic rules of baseball (3 outs per inning, batters, pitchers, etc...), but they do not understand all of the nuances that occur between every pitch because they do not possess the knowledge to comprehend these events (signals, fielders moving by pitch, etc..). The same can be said for readers at the second level; most possess the ability to read and comprehend at the surface level, but they need to be taught how to understand a text more deeply. I have already used "Conversation Piece" by Ned Guymon as an activity to help students make inferences by using clues from the text.
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"Conversation Piece" seems like a fantastic way to develop the idea of making inferences. Last year, with my American Literature crew, I tried to help them get to the bottom of Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants." It was real hard. I think I should build them up, over the course of a semester, using easier and more approachable texts, such as "Conversation Piece", and then get to more complicated works.
ReplyDeleteThere's probably some really good film tie-ins, too. Later on in the book, Gallagher mentions viewing "The Sixth Sense" as a film that requires multiple readings to really get. By viewing "The Sixth Sense", or just scenes from it, we could probably grab student interest. And, once we hook them, we transfer the skill over to high interest reading...
"The Conversation" by Francis Ford Coppolla has a great scene where Gene Hackman tries to do this exact type of thing. Hackman plays a private investigator paid to spy on a man suspected of having an affair. He manages to record a conversation the two would-be lovers have in the park, but the audio isn't quite clear. As he adjusts his sound equipment, the sinister reality of the conversation becomes apparent. If anyone wants the film clip, it's in the repository. Look in the folder titled "Film Stuff--Graci", and the actual file is called "conversation.flv". Use the FLV Player (also in there) to view it.
Can anyone think of other films that require deduction?