Carolyn L. Streets
As a middle school ELA teacher, I recognize the value of stories and their enduring understandings. Thus, I strive to introduce and immerse students in reading content-rich literature. This is not always easy to accomplish given the high demands to satisfy both curricular expectations and the time it takes to teach them. It is widely recognized that schools can and should do more to engage students in the kinds of reading that enable them to become literate, well-informed adults. This is done by emphasizing real-world critical reading of sources (like magazines, newspapers, and scholarly essays) that provide worldly background knowledge and molds students into informed citizens. It also lays a pathway to other disciplines like social studies and world history where students can use their interdisciplinary logic to make connections between what they read and current events.
Widely successful book to film adaptations like
Harry Potter, The Hunger Games,
and
Twilight
series are the immediate examples students often reference as their reading choices. The entertainment value of these is measurable and their enduring classic themes (good vs. evil or death and resurrection for instance), bond readers in a milieu of fantasy and the fantastic. But, more complex pieces (like memoirs and narratives for example), are often excluded from their personal libraries. Thus, I see importance in exploring what new understandings may be gleaned when students are challenged to analyze more complex literature. Therefore, I seek to create a unit that considers integrating content-rich materials into the established curriculum in new and innovative ways in order to engage and assist students as they hone their reading comprehension skills.
This unit is on par with the 2017 Yale New Haven Teachers Institute seminar on adapting literature because it explores the intersection between texts and how students will interpret their relevance through other forms. I saw participating in the Institute as a great opportunity to add another layer to my teaching in helping to expose students to content-rich literature and to help them independently apply reading comprehension strategies. In fact, decades of research evidence the correlations between strong literacy skills on cognitive functions. However, it is argued that the way reading is taught is not conducive to producing a love for literacy which is why many students are disinclined to read. Consider the argument that schools overemphasize teaching to too many standards thus producing students who are memorizers instead of thinkers. Thus, we must ask ourselves to consider how the simple act of reading can enhance students’ critical thinking when they are provided space to actually read. In fact, a hallmark of my best practice is to integrate a plethora of diverse reading materials into the established curriculum as a means to support students as they examine the weight of asserted meanings, read with specific intentions, and address the subjectivity of their own interpretations. The challenge that I have had is getting my reluctant readers to critically engage in the materials presented that helps them shift from entry level skills to becoming independently attuned to relational patterns of content and language which convey overall meanings. Since taking the film adaptation seminar at Yale, I have been challenged to think about how film and literature intersect. I like to expand on this by using a broad interpretation of what adaptation means within the context of my teaching and its impact on student learning. So, I plan to spend time reflecting on my pedagogical practices as I develop this unit.