Reformulation

Works Cited
Beers, Kylene. When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do:  A Guide for Teachers, 6-12. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2003. Print.

In play or screenwriting, adaptation is a source of great consternation. Did the writers get this or that detail from the novel/comic/stand-up act/song/historical document correct?  Did they incorprate everything the original piece of art had or did the not incorporate enough?  Did they add anything?  Should they have?  All this is to say, there's a great deal of complex thought that goes into taking a subject text and reformulating it as a different kind of text.  In Kylene Beers' reformulation technique, students are able to learn from performing these complex processes and by, hopefully, reformulating the texts they read into formats that are easier for them to use (websites, audiobooks, poems and the like).

“…reformulations encourage students to talk about the original texts.  In addition, reformulations encourage students to identify main ideas, cause and effect relationships, themes, and main characters while sequencing, generalizing and making inferences,” writes Beers on page 160.  Reformulation is great because it works so many educational “muscles” at the same time.  Students who would be discouraged or overwhelmed by too many questions will do the same amount of work they would have done otherwise but will be able to focus their energies on a task that feels creative rather than regurgitative.  Reformulation is also frequently used as a group activity and brings with it all of the benefits of group work in that students who aren’t normally heard suddenly have to speak up, knowledge is shared and different perspectives are given equal footing.  Additionally, the organizational skills of pulling off working group-work are applied to story structure and retelling skills.

“As the students worked through their reformulations, they returned to the text, reread portions, argued over meanings, questioned whether something was important or not, and listened to each other’s interpretations… Eventually, students begin to see how form influences the message” (Beers 162).  Reformulation is perfect for students who are mentally capable of deep text analysis but encounter superficial differences on the way there.