Right now, I'm working on one of our unit plans, Different Motivations for Reading, which calls for alternate ways of reading a text based on your goals (i.e. purposeful reading).  This of course supports traditional ways of reading a text (i.e. being linear, reading for completeness, or going deeply into the text), but we want to support casual forms of reading as well.  These might range from figuring out what happens to your favorite character in a novel (poor Ahab!) to compiling a list of choice quotes (to impress your friends at parties) to getting inspiration for creating your own stories.  Why shouldn't students be taught that reading can be an experimental (and fun) process?  This outlook is informed by the ways we read online, as well as by our NML Whitepaper skills, specifically: networking-- the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information; and play-- the capacity to experiment with one's surroundings as a form of problem-solving.  Hopefully thinking about a text this way doesn't preclude traditional forms of reading (and teaching literature), but instead supports it and allows for more focused and meaningful work in the classroom.

This unit plan is still in the works, but I'm looking forward to exploring different means of engaging with the text in the other parts of the Teachers' Guide  (the curriculum plan, tentatively named Adaptations and Translations is next!).