"It's been fifteen years since I had to take out a Green Beret."

Day two of Chapter One of Batman Year One.

Say you're an English teacher. All you really want is for students to read the book. Okay, you want them to understand it, and then you want them to analyze it, but at a minimum you want them to read it. The dilemma is this: if you tell them to read the book, and give them time to read, it's easy for them to stare at the pages and not really read anything. And this is a tempting option for many of them since reading is, you know, lame. But if you give them a handout with questions so that they have to read the chapter, there is a good chance they will zero in on those questions, flip through the pages looking for answer, and not get any sense of the story being told.

Today after the students finished their reading comprehension questions we reviewed the chapter. Then I gave them another handout, with higher level questions, asking them to analyze the main characters. This strategy did not completely circumvent the problem described above but I think it helped.