What is the thesis to your article for this course? What support will you cite to help you make your case?

What is the thesis to your article for this course? What support will you cite to help you make your case? 

'Every Day is [Not] Exactly the Same': Using Popular Music in the Classroom to Encourage Resistant Readers

Using music in the high school English classroom seems like it might lead to some disgruntled students, or might cause a serious distraction. As a ninth grade English teacher, I have met quite a few resistant readers. During a unit on the Dystopian novel, The Maze Runner by James Dashner, I used popular music to compare and contrast themes and motifs between songs and the novel. I used Nine Inch Nails' song "Every day is exactly the same," and Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive" to encourage my students to engage with The Maze Runner novel. While all of my students responded quite positively to this assignment, my resistant readers responded more positively and engage more with the reading after doing this analysis than my regular readers.

Using multimodality in the classroom often encourages students to engage more fully with the tasks they are presented. I will explore how the use of popular music encourages resistant readers to engage more fully with a novel. Integrating multimodality mediums in the classroom can and will change how our 21^st century students learn. 

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