Lights, Camera, Action: Using Moviemaking to Motivate Adolescent Struggling Readers to Read and Engage Them in the Reading Process

Abstract

Many teachers and researchers have found that motivation and engagement seem to decline as students enter adolescence, and one of the causing factors is limited opportunities for creative expression. Moviemaking a text undoubtedly encourages students' creative expression to a great extent. This paper explores the integration of moviemaking in an eighth-grade classroom where more than half of the students were considered struggling readers. The author describes in detail the steps of how moviemaking was integrated to motivate adolescent students to read and further engage them in the reading process, from book introduction, reading and script preparation, to movie shooting and editing. Moreover, the author discusses the issues encountered at different stages, and solutions they came up with together. This paper suggests that adolescents' literacy need to be re-evaluated especially these nontraditional or “non-academic” digital literacies. Adolescents especially struggling adolescents must be given opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities in these literacy activities, which helps build their self-efficacy in school reading and learning. But this process must be scaffolded. Ideas of how to scaffold adolescents' participation are shared.