Bringing the Outside In: Visual Ways to Engage Reluctant Readers

by Sara Kajder

The reading that we value in school is becoming further and further distanced from the literacy students experience in their outside lives. Inside the classroom, we ask our students to immerse themselves in print texts and write purposefully. Once out the door, they are text-messaging, blogging, engaging in online multi-player games, and expertly integrating words, images, and music to create original texts. Can we import these textual spaces and literacies into English class to help re-connect students who don't see themselves as readers and writers?

English educator Sara Kajder's answer is an emphatic “yes,” and in Bringing the Outside In she demonstrates myriad ways to employ students' outside talents in the classroom. Drawing on multiple examples of student work, she shows how she adapts the curriculum to incorporate an expanded definition of literacy and literacy tools. Sara offers teachers guidance on how to extend their repertoire of teaching strategies, and help kids connect their natural curiosity and skills as readers and writers of both print and electronic texts, while keeping reading and writing at the center of the curriculum.

Keying in on the visual aspects of literacy, and building upon students' growing interest in using words and images from their lives to read and write for authentic reasons and authentic audiences—integrating such strategies as digital storytelling, visual think-alouds, visual literature circles, and others into English class—Sara and her kids redefine what it means to be literate in today's world. By adding visual components to class activities and projects integrating tools ranging from pencils and paper to “weblogs” and “wikis,” even reluctant students can become engaged and see themselves as readers and writers for the first time.

Genres: Teaching, Education

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Sara Kajder, Ph.D. is a Clinical Professor in the English Education program at The University of Georgia. A former middle and high school English teacher, her research has examined teachers' pedagogy and students' reading and writing practices with digital media. She received the 2012 James Britton Award for her book Adolescents and Digital Literacies: Learning Alongside our Students. A sought-after national consultant and speaker, she is also the recipient of two technology leadership fellowships in English/Language Arts, the inaugural Divergent Award for Excellence in a Digital Age Research, the NCTE Halle Outstanding Middle Educator Award, and multiple teaching awards and recognitions.

Reviews

[bjneary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sara Kajder did a great job of chronicling her use of Web 2.0 tools to engage reluctant high school readers. The introduction credits Kajder with inviting students in and teaching them as readers using the tools of technology. This book is about becoming a more effective reading teacher and challenges all teachers "to step into the twenty-first century along with our students. We need to catch up."
I loved all of her stories about the many students and the different ways she was able to slowly reach out to them and gives us student exemplars to further our understanding. Using 7 different chapters the author uses students and Personal Narrative, Digital Stirytelling, Literacy Narrative, Marking a Path Through Text, Working with Words, The Visual Think Aloud and Making Meaning to engage the reluctant reader(s). Ultimately she invites us to "examine, play, invent, reinvent, and join in the conversation." A terrific read and resource, it has helped me with booktalking and digital booktalks.

[Wesley Price]

Upon analyzing the literacy habits of students who might be classified as bad at English class, Kajder uncovered an untapped world of extracurricular reading. Her unsuccessful students, she found, were often engaged in complex and highly literate projects. The digital formats and online publication of these projects, foreign to the classroom, gave students the impression that their work was not of value to their educations. Kajder, an experienced, English educator has presented a collection of classroom procedures which are friendly to alternate digital and visual literacies. In each chapter, Kajder provides step by step guides for leading a class through technology enhanced lessons in digital storytelling, reader profiling, visual reading strategies, and visually enhanced reporting. With each lesson, Kajder offers lists of warnings and tips which she compiled through experience. This book is a tool to help middle and high school educators plan and assess student reading in a way which is true to the student’s real world experience of literacy.—Wesley Price

[Guisela · Rating 5 out of 5]

love it!