Thoughts on reading the “Introduction” from Action Strategies for Deepening Comprehension: Role Plays, Text-Structure Tableaux, Talking Statues, and Other Enactment Techniques That Engage Students With Text by Jeffrey Wilhelm. 

This text is written to share strategies that are framed by theory. The strategies are activities that get students, and teacher, up out of their chairs and interacting with each other in dynamic ways. Some of the things I have read about require planning and manipulatives, others are things that can be done on the fly – so this suits my style quite well. 

The goal of this text is to enrich the reading process for students so that they can gain a deeper understanding of what they read. Student comprehension and reading levels should increase with the activities and strategies in this text, although there is no quantitative data presented, only qualitative.  

One thing that will work well for my students is on page 7: before students read a poem, cut lines up, give them the lines, let them move around the classroom to share their lines, they should try to order the lines, and “stitch together an idea of what the poem may be about.” I have done this during a summer camp with a short story and it worked really well. I don’t often use poetry in my classroom, but now I will try it and other forms of writing.  

Another technique is called “hot seat and alter ego.” This one sounds very fun! When students have a question about why something happened in a text, or why the author made the result of something happening a particular thing that confuses or creates further dilemma they play this game to work out the possibilities. Students play the characters (seated) and a student stands behind each of the “characters” to say what they really thought. The audience is able to ask questions to explore the issues. Yes, this takes guidance and is an incredibly creative way to explore text – but isn’t some of this what we ask them to do in writing when they do a close read or analysis work?  

Wilhelm encourages teachers to have students enact parts of the text, or critical issues underlying the text, he states that “Vygotsky (1978) posited that all learning is social. Enactments give teachers a way to ‘socialize’ meaningfully with students – engaging, confronting, and challenging them, so they will outgrow their current selves and learn new strategies, stances, conceptual knowledge and ways of being” (p. 11). 

He also says that these strategies will assist in “motivating and assisting students, particularly at-risk and reluctant students, to become more engages and competent readers and learners” (p. 9). 

What is the culture of your classroom like? I am a practitioner of culturally relevant teaching, as such, on page 12 Wilhelm points out that the strategies in his text are socio-constructivist and democratic. This sounds like a solid base to work from with my students because they naturally are social and like to make sure that everyone is heard. This would mean that all students are learning from the whole community that you create. And, on the assessment side of things, “in an enactment, reasoning must be made visible, and knowledge made accountable” (p. 13).  

If you are particularly concerned about your male students and their reading, Wilhelm creates a specific chart of how these enactment strategies increase the literacy rates of his male students (yes, based on theory and research of others). This section is on page 15 and I would strongly encourage anyone researching Young Men of Color (higher education focus), or My Brother’s Keeper (primary and secondary education focus), or the MATCH initiative reading program (3rd grade population – UNM is active in this), to review this page and utilize it in your rational for how literacy can be increased for males specifically. 

You can use the survey on page 17, “How Good a Motivator Am I?” to evaluate where you stand on engaging your students. Only, don’t sugar coat your answers and give yourself credit for things you either think you do, or have done once or twice. Really rake yourself over the coals and examine your teaching practices. Then make your own system as you read this text (or this blog, although this blog really should encourage you to read the text because I cannot tell you what a great book this is) of things you will do with your students in the next year and make it something you can come back to and review.