Time to teach reading
Miguel Centellas teaches political science (including comparative politics) at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA.He recently wrote in his blog, Pronto, "I’ve had trouble getting some of my students (in a 200-level political science course on 'Democracy & Democratization') to engage in the semester readings. So finally I decided put together a handout to walk them through a single article."
HIs well-done worksheet is available for downloading at the blog site.
Okay, maybe you don't want your students to read Wendy Hunter's "Brazil's New Direction" from the Journal of Democracy. But this worksheet is eminently adaptable to your purposes.
It reminds me of the 35 questions I once wrote to help my students recognize and understand the important ideas and implications in a two-page excerpt from Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
Students really do need this kind of instruction, and the sooner they begin learning and practicing intelligent reading, the better.
Centellas' worksheet is based on an excellent bit of instruction by Timothy Burke, a history professor at Swarthmore, How to Read in College
"The first thing you should know about reading in college is that it bears little or no resemblance to the sort of reading you do for pleasure, or for your own edification..."
Great ideas to help your students and to help you.
Labels: pedagogy
posted by Ken Wedding @ 12:11 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home