Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Partnering with Adolescent Lit College Students

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This Spring I was able to see Penny Kittle, author of Book Love, speak. One of the takeaways for me was that she connected her students with college students for book discussions using Flipgrid. I loved this idea.
After working with a nearby university on a book grant that didn't come through, I suggested that we try this. I was connected with a professor that teaches an  Adolescent Literature course. 
We emailed a few times and spoke on the phone. I opened it up to our English teachers and had three people interested. We plan to have our students connect in October and again in November on Flipgrid as part of their literature circles. 
The college students are required to read The House on Mango Street, The Good Braider, If You Could Be Mine, The Hate U Give, and How It Went Down. They must also choose two or three from an optional list divided by theme. I went through the list to see which titles we had multiple copies of so that our students could read those along with the college students. This is the list:
Under the Mesquite-ordering 10 copies for a novel in verse unit
Long Way Down-4 copies
All American Boys- 4 copies
Boy 21 5 copies
Monster- 29 copies **
Girl in the Blue Coat-4 copies
Salt to the Sea-3 copies
Refugee 55 copies**
All We Have Left 4 copies
Full Cicada Moon- ordering 10 copies for a novel in verse unit
Home of the Brave-ordering 10 copies for a novel in verse unit
Between Shades of Gray 4 copies
Simon Vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda 31 copies **
Wonder 21 copies **
Out of My Mind 21 copies **
Turtles All the Way Down 3 copies
Every Last Word 4 copies
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks 25 copies**
The Sun Is Also a Star 3 copies
Speak 71 copies **
We Were Here 3 copies
Out of the Easy 3 copies

I'm really looking forward to this collaboration. I'm hoping that this will be a good motivator for our students. 

I'm considering different frameworks for discussion like the Book-Head-Heart framework from Disruptive Thinking, the conferencing questions on Penny Kittle's site, or other frameworks for helping the students compose their Flipgrid responses. What method do you and your teachers use?

Do you connect with any nearby colleges or universities? If so, how?

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