topic: A Reading Exercise

10-second review: What does it take for you to read the following?

Title: “Reimagining Our Inexperienced Adolescent Readers from Struggling, Striving, Marginalized and Reluctant to Thriving.” CL Greenleaf and K Hinchman. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (September 2009), 4-13. The secondary school publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).

“We begin this article by asking you to read the following text:

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What strategies did you use to make sense of your reading of this text, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States? What caused you to slow down or reread? Under what circumstances might a teacher introduce this document to students—even those thought to be struggling with reading? What challenges might young people representing an array of reading abilities encounter as they read? How could a teacher help those young people to address any challenges and weigh the text’s possible meaning? What knowledge and strategies might young people extrapolate form this experience to other reading?” p. 4.

Comment: Interesting exercise and questions. RayS.