You Gotta be the Book- Ch. 4

I liked the fact that Wilhelm has switched his focus of students on to the less proficient readers. It is nice to see how these students have changed in their reading ability, and makes me feel more confident in myself as a teacher that there will be a way to help any student, no matter what the struggle is. I think that the most important part of using drama in the classroom for reading was to get the students into the story, and being able to "enter the text". Libby could only do that with stories she could relate to, and neither of the boys seemed to be able to visualize a secondary, imaginary world in their heads while reading a story. However, using the drama skills that Wilhelm came up with, it forced the students into thinking more outside the box of what the book was literally saying through the text. These activities helped the students enter the text, and therefore, they could move onto so many other dimensions from that point. Another good thing about using the drama was that the students weren't dependent on it. Once they got used to seeing how to relate to the story and use their personal experiences to make connections they didn't have to use drama to always do that, and then they could use a form of drama to go to another dimension of reading. These students who were so reluctant and unmotivated at the beginning became so willing and excited about reading by the end of the study that is amazes me, and i am sure amazed Wilhelm. I am also sure that there are other tactics out there for other kinds of students if the drama didn't work for them to become connected to the text and be able to relate and experience the story. It is just a matter of finding different ways to reach students and what they might be interested in.