Re: Reading Labs

[cleveren@english.fsu.edu (Carrie Leverenz)]

I'm just catching up on e-mail, so if my response is too late to be useful,
just dump it.  I supervise something called the Reading/Writing Center at
Florida State.  Although we have a for-credit course on the books called
"Individualized Instruction in Reading" that students can take for variable
1-3 credits, we don't have any teachers/tutors with special skills in
teaching reading.  (The tutors are graduate students who are trained tot
each first-year writing.)  Because our instruction is supposed to be
individualized to match a particular student's interests or needs, I didn't
think it would be wise to establish a set curriculum.  Instead, I set up a
policy of having students choose their own reading and keep a reading log
that they share with their teacher or tutor at each appointment.  Students
can keep logs in which they practice a lot of the "expert" reading
strategies that we all practice--annotating, summarizing, responding as a
reader, arguing, constructing a vocabulary list (useful especially for ESL
students working on idiomatic expressions) as well as other kinds of
constructive reading like trying to describe the author or writing a letter
to the author, etc.  We also ask them to write logs about their reading
processes, about what makes a particular text hard (or easy) to read, etc.,
so that students gain some understanding of themselves as readers as well as
an understanding of the texts they read.  Of course, we have the luxury of
not having to give students a grade (our courses are ungraded but count as
elective credit toward graduation) and not having to meet any predetermined
exit standards.  But Florida does have a competency test that students have
to pass, and when we work with students on passing the Reading portion of
the CLAST test, we focus exclusively on how to take the test, on how to do
the reading required of the test.

So my question would be--what kind of reading do these students need to know
how to do?  If they're taking COMP I simultaneously withyour reading lab, I
would think it would be fun to construct reading activities that support the
writing classes.

Carrie Leverenz

>Our writing center must conduct a reading lab for Comp. I students who
>scored less than 19 on the ACT reading section.  Evidently, there had been
>regular reading courses which, of course, required teachers who required
>salaries.  Probably, it was more cost effective to let the center assume
>responsibility.  
>
>This is my first year as director and second year at the university.  Right
>now, the reading lab consists of eight chapters in a fill-in-the-blank
>workbook.  The students dislike the text as well as the busy work.  After
>this semester, I've been encouraged to make changes. 
>
>Is anyone else involved with reading labs?  Any suggestions?
>
>
>Toni Boyd 
>boyd@uamont.edu
>
>