IRA in Chicago April 25-28

The International Reading Association is holding its annual convention this weekend in Chicago (April 25-28). If you can’t make it to the convention, you can visit the IRA Virtual Exhibit Hall at http://www.iraconvention.org/virtual-exhibit-hall.php.

One of the major strands of the sessions at the convention this year is Promoting Reading Engagement. In our teacher focus groups that EMC conducted during the development of the Mirrors & Windows literature program, we asked teachers what was their most difficult challenge in teaching language arts. The most frequent answer to that question was “engaging and motivating students.” We know that one of the often cited problems for many struggling readers is not that they can’t read, but that they don’t want to read. They don’t see any point in reading--they would rather be surfing the net, or on Facebook or texting their friends.

When we developed our program, we tried to meet that challenge head on. The goal of Mirrors & Windows: Connecting with Literature is to help students connect with what they read and to examine their own ideas and experiences. Great literature provides mirrors that help us reflect on our own world and windows that lead us into new worlds. This metaphor for the reading experience expresses the power of words to engage and transform.

Mirrors & Windows provides multiple opportunities for students to make important connections, including text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections.
Text-to-Self Connections: Reader’s Context questions before reading and Mirrors & Windows questions after reading ask essential questions that encourage students to make connections to their own lives and the world around them.
Text-to-Text Connections: Connections to a variety of primary sources and informational readings give relevance to literature by helping students to see relationships between literature and other content areas and texts. The Comparing Literature feature pairs two selections that are connected by common literary elements to develop analytical comparison skills.
Text -to-World Connections: Cross-curricular connections are embedded within selections and provide relevant background informational on other subject areas.

Mirrors and Windows provides the tools you need to engage your students in reading!