Archive for September 12, 2011

What can we do to engage the disengaged and apathetic students that appear in our classrooms? This was the main question we pondered this week with the guidance of our host Gary Anderson (@AndersonGL).

(If you didn't see Gary's introductory post, you can read it here or on Gary's blog "What's Not Wrong?".)

Discussion ranged from general strategies (being familiar with students' interests, encouraging free choice reading, sharing the planning on getting to our educational goals/destinations with our students, modeling, sharing our reading and writing lives with them, and generally remembering that we need to take care to avoid developing our own sense of apathy as the year goes on) to advice for specific challenges (what to do with a particularly resistant group of reluctant boy readers - including recommended titles, a reminder about The Rights of the Reader, sharing book trailers, and just plain being persistent and patient).

You can read the entire discussion here.