Exercising...

• "Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant, and interesting." 
Aldous Huxley

• "Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms." 
Angela Carter

Read, write, tell - Ler escrever e contar

Work to be presented at the / Trabalho a ser apresentado em
I Jornadas das Bibliotecas de Mirandela

Gerir a mudança para garantir o sucesso: novos formatos e ambientes de leitura e aprendizagem  | 17 e 18 de maio de 2013

The need to motivate students to read is a cross-curricular imperative and a prerequisite for the development of different skills of analysis, synthesis and processing of the material read.

The use of texts that are appropriate to the age of the students, in conjunction with the use of digital tools makes it possible for students to make texts their own, to transform and present the text in different ways, to build parallel texts or create graphical representations of the texts. This will be the path for a more motivating and full reading experience. This type of activity also allows the foreign language teacher to watch  vocabulary development, the evolution in terms of pronunciation and the improvement of students'communication skills.

Through some examples already tested with students I intend to show how one can transform the Extensive Reading Activity or any other reading activity into a stimulating challenge.

A necessidade de motivar os alunos para a leitura é transversal ao currículo e uma condição impreterível para o desenvolvimento de capacidades de análise, de síntese e de transformação do material lido.

A utilização de textos apropriados à faixa etária dos alunos, em conjunção com ferramentas digitais variadas e que permitem a apropriação, transformação e apresentação do texto, a construção de textos paralelos ou a representação gráfica do material trabalhado poderá constituir-se como um percurso motivador rumo a uma experiência de leitura mais motivadora e plena. Este tipo de atividades permite ao professor de línguas estrangeiras assistir ao desenvolvimento da área vocabular, a uma evolução ao nível da pronúncia e a um melhoramento da capacidade de comunicação dos alunos.

Através de alguns exemplos já testados com alunos pretendo mostrar como se pode transformar a Extensive Reading ou qualquer outra Reading Activity numa atividade estimulante e desafiadora.

What teachers make

A very nice poem by Taylor Mali

You want to know what I make?

I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).

Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:

I make a goddam difference! What about you?

Crying a river

Cassius:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)

Nice quotation from (probably) my favourite Shakespeare's play. Also the inspiration for the title of the book I've just finished. Maybe some will call it a tear-jerker, but I don't care - I liked it and I cried. Read a bit more on it. I am still a bit beyond words...