Lead Story Choices from 10/20/08

S.F. Austin High School, 9th grade (Resource) Basic English I.

Lead Story Selections for 10/20/2008:
(Sorry, I failed to record exact headlines and authors last week but have done so for this week's selections.)

1. Students were particularly interested in UT's #1 ranking and their resounding win over Missouri. They did not pick a particular article to be the lead story for this topic but thought that a front-page headline about the #1 ranking would be appropriate. Section C1, 10/24/08

2. My students are absolutely fascinated by all things electronic. They quickly decided the article about the cell phone's 25th birthday should be a lead story and should go into more detail comparing the difference in price, weight, and technological abilities of cell phones in 1984 versus today. Section D, page 1, Monday 10/24

3. Finally, students enjoyed reading about the Maker Faire from section E page 1 on 10/24 (the picture initially caught their attention--people riding what looked like bicycles suspended from poles with bungee cords). Though they did not think the article talking about the event after it had occurred should be the lead story, they did express disappointment that they did not know the fair was going to happen. This disappointment led to their decision that a lead story advertising the fair before it happened would have been nice.

In more general terms, I'm still working on having every student read the newspaper and then carry on conversations about what they have read. All of my students have significant reading disabilities and are so used to not being able to understand what they read that they hesitate to try anymore. It's interesting to see the really disenchanted ones immediately turn to pages of electronics advertisements or the comic strips. Others assume they have "read" an article simply by looking at a picture associated with the article.

So far, this experience has reinforced for me the sad fact that my students are incredibly isolated from what's going on in the world due (at least in part) to their low reading skills. Hopefully, over the next few weeks, they'll become more comfortable with the newspaper and will realize that they can gather information from the paper even if they don't necessarily understand all the words. I'm also hoping to see an increase in their curiosity about world events as they continue to participate in (or at least listen to) weekly discussions with their peers. We'll see...

--Jessica Mitchell
Special Education English and Reading
Austin High School