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I particularly like the Sunday Magazine and Week
in Review sections of the New York Times and Washington Post. Also,
articles from the New Yorker. If the goal
is to have adults in your workshop experience the strategies as learners -- and
I think that's a great way to go -- then magazines such as these work really
well.
I did a workshop last winter in which I used an
article from the New York Times Sunday Magazine. The article was
about a college football coach ("The Most Offensive Mind in Football",
12/4/05). It is about offensive strategy, as seen through the eyes of
coach Mike Leach, of Texas Tech. Sound interesting? I can hear you
all groaning and shaking your heads in bewilderment. Football?
Ah...but it was fun! Graeat photos, excellent graphics,
and a long, substantial, and very insightful article about a
brilliant, iconoclastic strategist. There were only four men in the workshop; other than that, a roomful of
women. The men hunkered down and got right to work. The
women looked at me like I was from Mars -- now there's a text-to-text
connection for you! -- but by the end of the exercise they were all
converts.
And a nice thing about the Times' Magazine is
that it's a relatively big format. This makes it easier to work in small
groups -- which encourages shared learning and the kind of conversational,
thinking-out-loud approach advocated by Keene, Tovani, Miller, Harvey and
Goudvis, et al. I would add to this mix that I had the groups in my
workshop working on scrolls of the article. This made sharing and
conversation even easier and opened the way to a much broader discussion in each
group about how you actually go about comprehending such an article -- which was
the whole point of my workshop, and will be the point of the two sessions
that you will be running as well.
Good luck with your workshops!
Dave Middlebrook
The Textmapping Project A resource for teachers improving reading comprehension skills instruction. www.textmapping.org | Please share this site with your colleagues! USA: (609) 771-1781 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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