What We'll Do in the Summer Remedial Class

For the summer remedial class, I finally decided to guide the students to read the book High School Musical: Wildcat Spirit. In fact, before the decision was made, I had several ideas running through my mind. I could have the students

1. review the textbooks--Book 5 and Book 6

2. read an English story book/novel

3. read several inspiring articles

4. translate some good stories or articles in class (They have to understand the articles before they can translate them into Chinese.)

Finally, yesterday I decided to have the students read a 115-page book. They have read too many essays or articles in the textbooks or on the test. Reading a book will give them a different experience.

I chose Wildcat Spirit because in the story the students are likely to find what is familiar to them: high school life, basketball, friendship, love, conflicts, etc.

Since the students have to read at least 10 pages every day, they have to use some reading strategies; namely, skimming, scanning, and guessing. I'd like to show them that they don't need to understand every word on each page in order to know about the story.

Hopefully, they can benefit to some extent from this experience.