
Reignite Passion For Literacy By Creating Mystery
Reignite Passion For Literacy By Creating Mystery is an online micro-course for practicing teachers who want to reawaken the love of reading in their students. This course explores in and out of classroom strategies for you to instill the excitement and joy of reading in your students using the shroud of mystery. This strategy is intended for all grade levels, and further reading on topics covered as well as tools to help you in implementing this strategy are provided within the course.
Literacy is a challenge across all grades and subject level
Despite efforts by schools to extend the accessibility to books during COVID such as expanding eBook collections or partnering with local libraries, teachers and librarians are still seeing dwindling enthusiasm for reading. This not only creates a problem for students who are not getting to learn amazing things from fantastic books, but also for libraries that are looking to circulate in new, high-interest books that would further draw student interest.
Using mystery to draw interest
This course will show you how you can leverage the power of mystery to revive your students’ love for reading. There will be examples of other industries utilizing the power of mystery to draw interest and tools that you can use to apply the same concept to books.
Meet your instructor – Alicia Ray
Alicia Ray is a veteran educator of 15 years from North Carolina and currently teaches AIG at her middle school. She also serves as a digital learning coach and library-media coordinator in a STEM magnet middle school. She is the author of Educational Eye Exam: Creating Your Vision for Education.
Overview
Alicia Ray - AIG teacher, library media coordinator, and instructional coach - introduces herself and provides some insight into her professional background.
Alicia details the telltale signs of students' dwindling enthusiasm for reading, its effect on the school library, and her goals in tackling this problem.
Alicia details the strategies that she observed from other industries that brought the mystery and element of surprise to their products and how she wants to employ these strategies to get kids excited to read.
The Process
Alicia goes over using metaphors to pull students into a conversation about reading, which metaphor is good for which age group, and why this is necessary.
Alicia talks about announcing to students that something is coming and gathering interest while keeping the mystery alive.
Alicia goes over how you should be selecting books and the tags that would represent them.
Once you have your books and the index tags, Alicia walks you over both creative and simple display options.
Alicia talks about how to "wrap up" the process (pun absolutely intended), and how to handle student reactions.
Does this work as well as Alicia makes it seem?
Supplementary Information
Alicia talks about opportunities and pitfalls to watch out for.
Alicia details modifications for this strategy to make it more suitable for you and your students.
Alicia concludes the course by re-emphasizing the importance of the love of learning and reading.
Alicia provides additional materials to help you select and implement metaphors as well as sample posters for your display.