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The project made students want to read MORE? What?!? Check out some excerpts from the student reflections below!

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Increasing Reading and Literacy

If you're an English teacher, then one of the saddest moments in your professional experience is probably when students tell you that they hate reading. Or that they haven't read a book since such-and-such grade. These moments are genuinely heartbreaking, and I have often wondered, "If these students haven't felt a connection with a book since elementary school, how we are going to win them over with literature that was written from before their grandparents were born?" Fortunately, I've found an approach with virtual worlds that I think works pretty well.

While I was hoping to boost engagement and increase student understandings of literature by incorporating the creation of video games into my lessons, what I didn't quite expect was how becoming creators and storytellers would make students want to read more! I have literally dozens of positive responses from students about how this project helped to change the way they see reading and writing. Below are just a few of my favorites. They include quotes from English Language Learners, previously disengaged Latino males, Honors-level students, and bright-yet-underperforming students who started out doing just enough work to get by.

Quote 01:
Now, when I am scrolling through social media, when I come up across articles that are interesting for me, I actually read the whole article. Back then, I used to just skip them because I’d think that it’s boring.

I usually couldn’t focus on reading back then, and that is the main reason why I don’t like reading back then...But now, when I’m reading, my head is kind of like making a movie or a TV scene while I’m reading, so I’m not that easily...distracted today.

Quote 03:
English 11 this year was a whole new experience from my English classes in the past. Before, we would just write essays and do boring assignments on book analysis, but this year we found a new way to analyze books through the author’s perspective...This matters because in college classes when we’re analyzing books and novels, I have this new way to analyze books in a deeper perspective than everyone else because I’ve never learned this. I don’t think anyone is learning this. This is really different.

Now we’re not just reading the story and analyzing an author’s perspective. We’re becoming the authors and we are making a story...Understanding a story in the author’s perspective is really helpful. It can also be very helpful for assignments in the future by attaining better evidence and better reasoning and better understanding of the characters in a story.

Quote 02:
So someone like me, I don’t really like reading, and I struggle greatly at it. You know, I really notice that when I read something, I just go about it, but if I really read and ask myself and use some of the things that I was able to learn and apply…[it] really helps you get geeked up on the story and helps you understand it overall.

Something that I plan on doing is going back and reading my favorite book, like the only series of books I’ve read...and going back and reading—and really analyzing—how he acts and how he struggles and how he overcomes all these things. And that will help me understand the story better and see it in a better way.

Quote 04:
In the past, I’ve enjoyed the books that were assigned in my English classes...but once they were over, they never really stuck with me. I read them, did the assignments, and continued on to the next book, just read the words on the pages and didn’t look any deeper than that. I didn’t care for it.

...I learned that there’s a different experience when you read between the lines, and thanks to this I am considering going back and reading the books that I was assigned in my past English classes because I feel like I was overlooking their potential.

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