Read180
Read 180 is a research based reading program that is used in New Haven to boost reading levels of students who are below grade level readers. My students are from grades five through eight, but the program is available for high school students as well. My experience with the program has been quite positive as students who follow the program guidelines and faithfully engage in the Read 180 model show measurable positive growth. We always begin our days with students sitting in the rowed seats in the middle of the classroom followed by either one or two rotations to the three areas of my classroom. A small mobile white board in the back of my classroom helps us keep track of group movement on A days (one rotation) and B days (two rotations). I wear a whistle around my neck and utilize it to signal the movement of groups, much to the amusement of my fifth graders and much to the annoyance of my eighth graders. On a B day, when students go through two rotations, we spend about fifteen to twenty minutes at each station.
The software produced for the program adjusts to each students’ level. In my classroom I have a computer section against the back wall, set up with large screen Macs that I can see easily from the front of the room. When working on the computers students work on segments which include “zones” where they are able to practice reading comprehension, spelling, phonics, vocabulary building and writing. The reading area in my classroom is equipped with bookshelves, one large cushy reading chair and a rug where students can relax and enjoy their reading. In the reading area of my classroom students are able to read regular books, digital books or Ereads at their Lexile level. When students meet with me at the large round table in the front of the room, we utilize a textbook entitled The Real Book, which includes several units on different subjects meant to interest the students. Among the multiple segments available for students are; “Stand Up,” a look at young activists from around the world; “Water Fight,” a series of articles and stories on the growing water shortage; “Contagion,” a look at a topic we are all too familiar with; “The Hunt for Lincoln’s Killer”; and the unit I will create additional material for here; “Life in Dystopia.”
All of the units begin with a short video that generally introduces the topic, and provides some initial vocabulary for students. The two minute video introduces the concept of a dystopian world and introduces students to the two main examples of dystopian literature looked at in the unit; The Hunger Games, and The Lottery. A short informational text entitled World’s Gone Wrong is also included early on in the unit.
“The Emperor’s New Clothes”
Using this classic children’s tale as an introduction to the unit seems like a fun and innocent way to begin discussion that could get heavy and a little scary as we go forward. The guiding question in the Read 180 unit is “What causes people to go along with the crowd despite the costs?” This simple question will come up again and again in our study of dystopian literature and our connections to the world we live in. It is ironic and somewhat fitting that the hero of this story is simply a child who sees and speaks the truth. It is this voice of simple wisdom that saves the day over and over in the works that we read.
“The Lottery”
Shirley Jackson’s classic tale is the perfect story to get students thinking about what the results of conformity can be. Written in 1948, right after the world witnessed the devastation of World War II, the story turns a small town tradition into a nightmare as the yearly ritual of choosing one of the townspeople to die is carried out in a heartless and matter of fact manner. Getting to the heart of dystopian literature, the story leads students back to the driving question of the unit, “What causes people to go along with the crowd, despite the costs?” Like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, The Lottery seems to question the fragility of human nature under conditions that make us turn a blind eye so often. What makes us abandon our common sense of decency and common knowledge of good versus evil, allowing things to continue unchecked? Jackson herself seems to mock the utter blind conformity in the village when she writes, “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.”6 “The Lottery” is a great story to get students thinking about the price of conformity and the cost of remaining quiet in the face of wrongdoing, a lesson that many of us learn the hard way, including Shirley Jackson’s post World War II generation.
The Hunger Games
Another type of lottery brings Katniss Everdeen to the forefront of the dystopian world of Panem in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. Every year a lottery among the thirteen districts of Panem select one boy and one girl from the districts to participate in the Hunger Games. These games, the government’s “yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated” are a means of repression, ensuring the rebellions of the past not be allowed to happen again. The twenty six chosen children will fight to the death in a televised event that is mandatory for all to watch. Jane Beal writes in “Ending Dystopia; The Feminist Critique of Culture in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy,” “For these viewers, violence is entertainment, exploitation of the working under-class enables the cake and privilege that they take for granted, and political awareness and responsibility evaporation the heat of their panem et circensis mentality.”7 Katniss, herself calls the forced viewing of the murderous games, “the Capitol’s way of reminding us of how totally we are at their mercy.8” The Hunger Games brings the dystopian concept to a challenge in the minds of children as the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, unlike her counterpart Effie Trinket, refuses to accept what seems like fate. Beal writes in “Ending Dystopia,” “But in response to the big lie that women are living in utopia, when the actual conditions of their existence are mercilessly dystopian, authors send their female protagonists on a journey of personal and relational growth. The journey inevitably includes acquisition of new knowledge, new strength, and new, previously unknown, and virtually unimaginable freedom.”9 Perhaps, if not through examples from real life, but with examples from literature, our young readers will find a way to fight any future dystopian reality.
I, Robot
I chose Isaac Asimov’s classic science fiction text in order to highlight the rise of AI in our society among other reasons. One, I am a fan of Isaac Asimov’s and feel that his science fiction fits perfectly in this unit. Also, AI, a topic very much in the news these days, was a dystopian element that was not represented in the readings associated with the “Life in Dystopia” unit which is a part of the Read 180 program. This timely topic is clearly a theme in the I, Robot collection of short stories. The exploration of robots which during Asimov’s time as still a bit of a fantasy, is a very timely topic now and has developed over the last few years so rapidly that it cannot be ignored in an examination of modern dystopian literature.
Finally, the composition of the book attracted me the most. The book is a collection of nine short stories separately published by Asimov from the 50s to the 60s. The stories all explore the rise of robotics in our world and the adjustments that humans have to make in order to accommodate the change. Published as a collection in 1950, the stories range from cute stories of child and robot relationships to the catastrophic possibility of robots, now known as AI, challenging mankind in the management of life on earth.
Common threads that links the stories are not only the subject matter, but also the narration. The stories are based on an interview by the infamous “robo-psychologist” Dr. Susan Calvin. The interviews trace the development of AI in the fictitious portrayal of the future and are told in a chronological order starting off in 1998 and ending with the final story set in 2052. Finally, this collection of short stories is connected by the three “Fundamental Rules of Robotics” introduced in the story, Runaround. To paraphrase, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through interaction, allow human being to come to harm, two the robot must follow orders given by a human except when the order conflicts with the first rule and, three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the previous rules.10 In the collection, the three rules serve as another thread that makes a connection for all the stories. We will review these connections and make up others as we explore our final project in which students will replicate Asimov’s style by writing their own stories in small groups and connecting them with a common theme.
