The first chapter of Sara B. Kajder's Bringing the Outside
In: Ways to Engage Reluctant Readers poses a provocative
question: "What Does Reading Look Like Anyway?" Reading, which
is so much a part of the life of anyone who is reading this
review, may look very different through someone else's window.

Is reading about decoding letter sounds and enjoying reading
circle time with Dick and Jane books? Is reading wading
through Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter or
producing a 10-page research paper with annotated footnotes
explaining what Mark Twain really meant in Huckleberry
Finn? Is reading digging through your car owner's manual
to discover how to work the audio system? Is reading following
your favorite blogs on the Internet and reading descriptions
of your friends in My Space?

Kajder would like her students to be literate in the academic sense-familiar
with and aware of literature for for its own sake and to meet
education expectations. But too often, she came across students
capable of decoding but who hated to read and chose not to
because "I don't have to read the stuff for school.... I just
have to talk like the teacher or think like the test."

These students may be resistant to "literature," which they perceive
as big fat boring books, but they are often voracious readers
in other venues such as newspapers, periodicals, websites
and blogs. Kajder believes students need to develop the kind
of literacy that will not only serve them in practical ways,
but enrich their understanding of themselves and the world
around them.

What happens when you read? Do you see movies in your head? Can
you envision the setting or appearance of a character? Do
you have internal graphic organizers that help you build outlines,
sort information or highlight main ideas? Do you build connections
between what you read and what you have experienced or already
know about? Can you "get inside a character's head" and look
at the world through his eyes?

Kajder understands that reluctant readers often miss these connections.
There are no movies, no mental files, no personal experience
connections, no new people they are eager to meet in literature.
She quotes a student as saying, "I don't get the words, and
they don't matter to anything I care about." Kajder knows
that some students see lines of text on a page like an endless
maze of hallways filled with closed doors. They are overwhelmed
not by what they see in when they read, but what they don't
see.

So what's the answer? Kajder proposes visual tools as a way to
add dimension to our reluctant readers' interaction with the
story. She suggests that visual images may help students understand
more about what they read, what it means, and why it matters.

Bringing the Outside In offers very practical and down to earth
information about how to do this, starting with encouraging
students to work with digital storytelling. Digital
storytelling sounded very hip and cool, but I kept wondering,
"How practical is this? How long will it take? How do you
manage this in a classroom? Is the technology a seductive
distraction from reading?" Kajder unpacks the process step
by step, offering up very specific planning support that provides
a pacing guide, organizational tools, and technical tips.

I could imagine how a class that might zone out on a session
about the "elements of a narrative" would be more likely to
be engaged by digital storytelling elements. Kajder works
through the list of point of view, dramatic question, voice,
soundtrack, pacing, and economy. Economy caught my
attention! What a clever trick! Students who would groan and
roll their eyes if asked to re-read would keep going over
text to work at constructing meaning in order to determine
what images they wanted to use or the emotional tone of music
that seemed appropriate. If students had to write less, they
would have to first write more, and then edit, explore words
that would convey more meaning, rewrite, and edit some more.
The difference is that it would feel purposeful and personal.

Kajder leads step by step through the development process in the
classroom from pre-writing exercises, to artifact gathering,
storyboarding, holding literary circles to review and critique,
and then revising before polishing, presenting and engaging
others in discussing the finished piece. This was easy to
follow and good standard writing workshop processes.

But what about the technology part? Helping students produce digital
stories sounded more than a little intimidating! However Kajder
discovered that her students had most of the basic computer
skills they needed. Many were were familiar with PowerPoint
or iMovie, and what they didn't know, they taught each other.
So now a reluctant reader is not only digging into her own
project, she getting into a classmate's story to help him
with technical skills.

Kajder doesn't shy away from the pragmatic aspect of this sort of
project. She had limited access to computers and addresses
the realities of how to get a roomful of kids to work with
a handful of less than optimal machines. Her warnings are
as practical as setting a timer to insure that students are
reminded to "save often." This advice is based on equipment,
software and human glitches that were experienced by her and
her own students.

"But will the technology overwhelm the storytelling?" I wondered
again. Kajder quotes a student's response: "We aren't learning
a technology; we're using technology to learn." She keeps
a sharp focus on the interaction with literature and the reading
process and has a keen appreciation for the siren song that
can lead students to lose track of the stories they are telling
as they swim in the medium they are using to tell the story.
Her priorities are clear when she says, "The trick is to know
how to take advantage of the unique capacities of a technology
tool to do something that is more powerful than what we did
without it."

For those who might see digital storytelling as a bit too long
of a leap, Kajder offers some lower key, lower tech ideas
about using visual images to encourage students to interact
with literature. She offers thoughts on the use of images
for organizers, word study, character analysis, main idea
and sequencing. These can be as simple as cutting and pasting
to create a "character's scrapbook," or building a word wall.
For those who are technology adventurers, she offers some
advice on weblogs and blogs.

Whatever the process, this is what matters, in Kajder's estimation:
students are not just decoding symbols or extracting information.
They are actively involved in the construction their own understanding
of what the text means. She began with students who "passively
expect the text to take action on them, as opposed to expecting
to take action themselves." She moved them to becoming initiators
of the action.

Because our students are bombarded with more and more text from more
and more sources, it seems critical to help them be discerning
readers. What rings most true in Bringing the Outside In
is this: Sara Kajder is determined to put her students in
control. As one of her students said: