IE Great Books!

I wanted to let others know about the wonderful experience my students
and I are having with  The Life of PI. My ABE 1 class (ranges from low
level readers to waiting-for-room-in-the-Pre/GED class) has been
listening to me read as they followed in their own book, about twice a
week since September.(My class is Mon-Thursday 9am -11:15am) I've done
vocabulary activities for almost every chapter, we've done repeated
visualizing for comprehension and recall, we've gone on the Internet to
find pictures of sloths, tigers, and hyenas as well as Krishna, and
Shiva, and we created our own temple like Pi's home. ( students and I
brought in: a Muslim prayer mat, a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a
statue of the elephant head four armed Ganesha,etc) My expectation for
most is not for them to read at this level, but to experience higher
level reading for the pleasure of a good story and to develop vocabulary
and comprehension skills. Yesterday, as we got into the story of how Pi
ended up on a lifeboat with a zebra, orang-utan, hyena, and tiger, my
students were clearly caught up in the drama of the story. Then I had
that teacher's thrill to see one student keep reading when I stopped for
break. All my students take the book with them when they move on to
Pre-GED. Today we find out what happens to the maddened hyena!!! Oh the
pleasure of a good book!     Martha Jean 




-----Original Message-----
From: professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of David J.
Rosen
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 8:18 AM
To: professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 760] Movies and texts about
low-literateadults

Professional Development Colleagues,

Several weeks ago I asked about books and movies that inspired you as a
teacher.  We had a rich and interesting discussion that produced a
terrific list that I have archived on the Adult Literacy Education Wiki
at

http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Books_and_Films_which_Inspire_Tea
chers

I hope you -- and others -- will help now with another question.  Can
you recommend good books or movies (or scenes from movies) that you
believe authentically capture the experience of an adult learning to
read, write or compute.  The film "Stanley and Iris" comes to mind, for
example. For some it is an authentic example, for others it is
inauthentic.  I am also interested to hear about scenes from films that
you believe are inauthentic, or that just plain get it wrong, and I
would like to know what you think was inauthentic about it.  I would
also appreciate hearing from people who learned (or are learning) to
read as adults.  From your experience as a person who has learned to
read as an adult, what texts, what films ring true? Which don't?

Those of you who teach adult new readers might be willing to take this
question to your students and post back to the list what they say.

Thanks for your help.

David J. Rosen
djrosen at comcast.net

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