27th Annual Student Research Conference
Making Sense of To Kill a Mockingbird: An Investigation of Multi-Sensory Workshops in the Language Arts Classroom
Kirsten E. Self♦
Dr. Rebecca Dierking, Dr. Barbara Price, and Dr. Dana Smith, Faculty Mentors
The classroom of 2014 is an environment filled with students expecting to be stimulated on the same level as the digital world they inhabit. Working to simulate this stimulation, this research project sought to enliven a class reading and response to Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird through a series of multi-sensory workshops. Conducted over a period of five weeks, the participants included 23 students enrolled in English I in a large suburban Missouri high school. The study focuses on the questions of whether sensory experiences have the ability to affect students' responses to a piece of literature and specificity when writing. Data used for this analysis was collected before, during, and after the workshops in the form of personal observations, dialogue with students, and student work. Data were examined for any changes including, but not limited to, specificity, text-to-text relations, text-to-world connections, text-to-self connections, and text-to-workshop connections.
Keywords: Education, reading, writing, sensory stimulation, specificity in writing
Topic(s):English MAE Intern
English
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 202-3
Location: VH 1236
Time: 10:00