I have had a great week, because I have been able to spent a great deal of time with all my nephews. We have had a lot of family in town and its been great to see all the boys in the family together It's also been great that I'm reading this book because a lot of what I've been experiencing with the boys have been echoed in Wilhelm & Smiths work. My six year old son is the youngest of the group by a least 7 years and he is right there with the others, trying his best to keep up. The older boys have been awesome; they encourage him, teach him and include him. I have witnessed all the aspects of what the book refers to as flow.
The book speaks of the Flow Experience with regard to the activities that boys engage in, and then Wilhelm and Smith relate it to boys experiences with literate actives. In the last chapters, particularly chapter five they look to the reading logs of the boys again and focus their attention on the the forth element of the Flow Experience according to their list--A focus on the immediate experience. One of the key aspects of the concept of that immediate experience is that of the social.They talk about this throughout the book. And in being social and having that social experience as a key component to developing relationships, Smith and Wilhelm look to the reading practices of the boy in their study to find that boys will be more engage in the reading when they can develop a relationship with the characters in a book. Although boys tend to like text that provides an immediate experience, like magazines and instructional text, they can relate to more aesthetic text like stories and novels if the can relate to the story and characters. The biggest problem with engaging boys in literature is being able to entice their interest early on in a book in order to keep them engaged. Most young men will read a book, and if it doesn't keep their interest in the first 15 minutes or so they will put it down. Smith and Wilhelm recommend frontloading before an assignment is read. Linking the text to the lives of the students. If they can relate to the story and the characters, the will want to engage in a relationship with the text. They will positive reading experiences.
