Fear of reading? Nevermore!

NEA Today, Jan 1999

This teacher wants to share his solution for helping kids crack the classics.

Who:

Al Baggetta, tenth grade English teacher, Agawam High School, Agawam, Massachusetts

E-mail:

baggetta@massed.net

Inspiration:

Many students find classics like Beowulf or The Raven alarming-but it's not Grendel or the creepy tap-taptapping that scares them. It's all that reading.

"I've often felt if literature were taken in smaller doses, it would be more understandable," Baggetta says.

Thinking about how to break down the classics into more digestible bits, he turned to an "art form" that has no problem engaging teens.

"When kids play video games, the intensity is unbelievable. You could drop a bomb right next to them, and they wouldn't notice," Baggetta says. "I thought it would be great if you could do the same thing with literature."

So Baggetta, a whiz at using the programming language Visual Basic, created Baggetta_Ware, interactive software that leads kids through Julius Caesar, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Beowulf and The Raven.

The software displays small segments of the literary work and then asks students to type in their answers to questions on character, plot, and setting. The program immediately scores students' responses before moving on to the next section of the work.

For instance, Baggetta's Beowulf: The Adventure begins by presenting the poem's opening stanza and firing off the first of 90 questions, "What prize did the Danish heroes and kings fight for?"

Students get one chance to answer each question, and they'd better be careful. Spelling and punctuation errors result in a wrong answer-and a lower score.

"They read Beowulf like they never have before, because they have to find the answer to that question," Baggetta says.

Lesson:

After Baggetta introduces a literary work and talks students through the vocabulary, they head to the school's computer lab for a few days to work through the program.

Baggetta pairs up students to answer questions cooperatively-and to solve the problem of fitting 30 kids in a 20station lab.

Back in class, students discuss the most troublesome questions. Since they've been using the programs, Baggetta says, they seem to better comprehend what they've read.

"They're learning the importance of reading and of paying very careful attention to what they're reading," he says.

Click:

Baggetta thinks his program bridges the gap between computer games that "give kids tremendous hand-eye coordination and nothing else"-and prepackaged literature software that merely asks kids to do their reading on a computer screen instead of the printed page.

"It's the interactivity that really makes this work," he says.

For More Information

Baggetta recently set up a Web site to share his software with other educators-for free. You'll need a computer equipped with Windows 95 or 98 to run the programs.

Just go to www.angelfire.com/ak/ english10/teachers.html to see what's available and to request to have software E-mailed to you.

Or send your request, along with two blank 3 1/2" discs and $1 to cover postage, to Baggetta at 177Adams St., Agawam, MA 01001.