Wilhelm Chapter 5

One thing that I liked about this chapter was the author's focus on struggling students. It seems easy (at least, easier) to engage highly motivated students with their reading, but a big concern of mine has always been how to deal with students that aren't necessarily interested in reading (or, don't think that they are). Wilhelm's experiences with several of his students is just that way, they are unmotivated, uninterested, and unprepared for what they have to deal with in a reading-centered classroom. One important thing that the author did in these types of situations was to (first) give them free choice in deciding what to read and (second) how to read it and demonstrate that they had successfully made meaning from it. The activities the he employs to get the students thinking about their own meaning-making processes are artistic and creative while still allowing the students to demonstrate mastery of the material. One student was allowed to draw a visual representation of what they had encountered in the text and after starting off with a few less engaging texts they quickly moved on to more advanced readings because they began to realize that reading was meant to stimulate and connect audiences, not fluster and annoy them. Once the student was able to demonstrate their connections to the text in a way that they felt best suited them, they were more willing to explore challenging texts and push the boundaries of their own readings. I think that the importance of choice is evident in both the selection of texts and in the demonstration of knowledge gained from those texts.