Below is a set of five discussion-driven prompts based on a video and article. The prompts are most often assigned to students through Edpuzzle. The article has been reformatted below.
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Category: Reading Resources
From a 2024 overhaul of the most-accessed reading-related posts for students, especially seniors.
Good Reads and Goodreads
Adapted from two posts from the reading section of this site: How to Choose a Book and Holt’s Checkpoint, Choosing to Read, and After You Read.
Responding to a Text: Goodreads
Throughout the reading process, you’re asked to consider the purpose of literature outside of a high school classroom. The video we watch ends with a particularly powerful quotation about this:
We should learn to treat [literature] as doctors treat their medicine, something we prescribe in response to a range of ailments and classify according to the problems it might be best suited to addressing. Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others: because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
The key word there is tool, as in a tool for our makerspace. Books are a way to solve problems and treat ailments and create meaning. They aren’t assignments to be endured (or circumvented, as the case may be); they are the most important part of the Humanities.
How to Choose a Book
Choosing a Book
If this post has been assigned to you, you have been asked to choose a book to read as part of our English course. Each time you do this, read the entire post that follows; it is meant to apply even to choices outside of school, so revisiting the specifics may help you develop that habit.
To choose a book to read, you should start with this apt metaphor:
We should learn to treat [literature] as doctors treat their medicine, something we prescribe in response to a range of ailments and classify according to the problems it might be best suited to addressing. Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others: because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
Holt’s Checkpoint, Choosing to Read, and After You Read
This is the static explanation of “Holt’s checkpoint,” which is a part of the reading process and the concept of choosing to read, both of which are explained in their respective posts. The directions are repeated through Google Classroom and Google Forms as part of all formal reading assignments.
Literary Analysis Guide
The Point of a Story
In a Humanities makerspace, you often write what you read and read what you write. We call the process emulation through analysis, or ETA writing. It means that analytical writing has a practical purpose, not just a “mean-spirited, picky insistence that every child get every last little scrap of ‘understanding’ that can be dug out of a book.”
That quotation comes from John Holt and his essay, “How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading,” which is part of our introduction to literature and the reading process. That is essential reading. There is also a three-part guide on how to read:
As You Read: Works of Literary Merit
Application
Use this while reading any work of literary merit as part of your makerspace learning. You can also use this protocol to replace an assigned text with a text of your own, when and if you are given permission to do so. The replacement must enable all three focuses outlined below.
Load a printable, two-side PDF of these criteria here:
The sources for all adapted materials are here, plus more on the reading process:
The Reading Process
This process applies to any work of literature or nonfiction. It’s also a universal process that can be used every time you’re asked to read. Note that there are levels to this: Everyone can watch the central video and discuss it; it takes a little longer to read and discuss optional readings, like the School of Life article or the excerpt from John Holt’s writing; and it will take significant time to read everything in the instructional post below. Make the time for as many levels as possible.
Well, Why Read?
A bit of bibliophagist imagery taken from a dive through Google Images.