What does pop culture and the Jonas Brothers have to do with teaching reading? I recently discovered a way to my student's motivation button when I brought in a magazine article about the Jonas Brothers.
Besides getting my students excited about reading, I was able to get a lot of mileage out of one article. We began by hitting background knowledge (schema). They had it; I didn't. I learned a great deal about this three man teenage band. The kids filled me in on the Jonas Brother's hobbies, interests, music, and more. Our community based schema gathering allowed us to come up with hot button questions that set a purpose for reading.
Questioning wasn't the only strategy or skill we took from this simple, pop culture article. My class recognized text features such as pictures and captions, and learned about new text features like sidebars. They figured out the article was written like a story (what we call narrative nonfiction) with quotes (instead of dialogue) and characters (the Jonas Brothers) and setting (the article carried us through places and events).
We didn't stop there. We found three "big ideas" in the article and was able to create a summary out of those ideas. The article started out telling about the Jonas Brothers adventures during their early days of superstardom, but then it went back into time and talked about their struggles before hitting the big time. This gave my students a chance to see how an author can go back and forth in the present and past. They also learned that being a superstar requires sacrifice and perseverance, and even though there are lots of great benefits, there is also a downside to the kind of life the Jonas Brothers lead.
Our pop culture article gave us a number of new vocabulary words to tackle. We learned words like "overzealous" and "repercussions". The kids had a blast learning these big words. I put my drama hat on and acted out being an "overzealous" fan. Let's just say they will never forget what the word "overzealous" means. The article brought to my classroom a high interest, engaging opportunity for learning and laughter.
Now that I've discovered my student's hot button, I'm on a roll. Everything doesn't have to be about pop superstars, but surely we can tap into our kids interest. What about an article on skateboarding or BMX racing? The boys will eat this up. And the girls will love reading about the latest fashions, tips on texting, or other push button topics. The opportunities to meet kids where they live are endless when we choose 21st Century topics to explore as great reading material.
-Lisa Frase
Copyright 2008 Effective Teaching Solutions / Teaching eVentures
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