Students in ENG101 will be able to increase their reading speed to 200 pages per week for self-proclaimed non-readers and 200+ pages per week for self-proclaimed readers at the end of 15 weeks.
This project, which I think of as a reading experience, is designed to help students cultivate a passion for reading if they don’t have one, reconnect them to their love of reading, help them find a love of reading, or skyrocket their love reading to the next level. Students might think they're a reader but our phones and social media have taught the world to skim bullet points, fragments, and bite sized single sentence responses–that isn’t reading. Reading is critical to be successful in college as well as in students' future careers as they need to be able to read and comprehend: media reports, research data, customer feedback, schematics and plans, white papers, articles, corporate strategy plans, social media analytics, proposals, job and grant applications.
My goals for students are:
- to get students more comfortable reading books;
- advancing their reading skills and vocabulary;
- increasing their reading speed and comprehension; and
- seeing writing techniques in action that they can use in your own writing.
I hope to encourage students to get to the point where they can read 200 pages per week if they're a self-reported “nonreader.” For those self-reported readers, I hope they can increase whatever they're current pages per week significantly. Being able to read 200+ pages per week is a requirement for advanced college and university courses as well as various careers.
Students were tasked to read as many books in 14 weeks as possible. I encouraged them to challenge themselves to “reach” with each additional book they choose to read–it’s okay to stretch outside their comfort zone. Students can't read all the same kind of books (all graphic novels or all Manga or all romance, etc.)
Over the course of 16 weeks students had numerous assignments connected to their reading:
- Module 1: Students completed a My Reading History discussion board, answer questions about their reading history, reading in their childhood and through K-12
- Module 2: Students completed a Whatcha Reading discussion board, answering questions about which of my reading goals they wanted to work on, what the first book they selected to read will be, and what challenges they think they might face and how will they address these challenges to be successful.
- Modules 3-8: Students completed a Reading Journal assignment, answering questions about the specific book they were reading or if they had finished a book, answering questions about the new book they had started. They were also taught how to calculate their reading speed
- Module 9: Students completed a Whatcha Reading Update, responding to some reflection questions about their reading experience so far, calculating their current reading speed and thinking about how their reading has helped in their other classes.
- Modules 10-14: Students completed a Reading Journal assignment, answering questions about the specific book they were reading or if they had finished a book, answering questions about the new book they had started.
- ENG101 Course Final: The ENG101 Course Final was tailored to reflecting on their reading experience over the course of the semester and how that experience connected to their writing experience.
I need to review the data and analyze the results.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Whatcha Reading Instructions | 149.94 KB |