Julie Calfee’s first step toward building relevance, value, and authenticity for her high school students is to put herself in her students’ shoes. For example, when reading Romeo and Juliet the challenge most readers face is keeping the two families straight. She uses the colors blue and red to represent the two families. These also happen to be the color schemes utilized in other movie renditions which she uses as examples. She also connects the story to gang culture with which the students are familiar from television, videos and from some of their own experiences. Through these two strategies she makes the story familiar and personal with the purpose of raising the level of authenticity.
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