44 Growing Up in a Kenyan Slum Taught Me the Real Value of Stuff
44 Growing Up in a Kenyan Slum Taught Me the Real Value of Stuff
Learning Outcomes
- Apply the reading process to “Growing Up in a Kenyan Slum Taught Me the Real Value of Stuff.”
- Summarize the article.
- Respond to the article.
- Connect the ideas in the article to your personal experience.
Preview the Article
Follow the steps below to preview the article “Growing Up in a Kenyan Slum Taught Me the Real Value of Stuff.” Ideally, you should print the article and write your responses in the margins of the printed copy. To read more about previewing, visit the chapter on previewing a reading.
- Read the title and subtitle. What do they make you think about? What do you think the article is about? What questions do you have? Record your predictions and questions on the printed copy of the article next to the title.
- Part of the article is about the author’s experience growing up in Manyatta, a slum neighborhood in Kisumu, Kenya. Use Google to search for background information about this place before you read the article. Write down what you learn on the printed copy of the article.
- Read the first two or three paragraphs. What additional predictions do you now have about the article? What additional questions do you have? Record them on the printed copy of the article.
- Scan the article and notice the headings (e.g. A pair of brown shorts) within the article. What additional thoughts or questions do these raise? Record them on the printed copy of the article.
- Scan the bolded and underlined vocabulary in the article. If there are any words that you do not know well, look them up in a print or online dictionary and write some notes about their meanings on the printed copy of the article. Keep in mind that some words have multiple meanings. You may need to read the sentence containing the word to understand the word’s usage. Additionally, there may also be proper nouns, such as Kisumu and Manyatta, and acronyms or abbreviations, such as NGO, that are unfamiliar to you but that you need to know to understand the article. These terms usually are not in the dictionary, so you will need to conduct a Google search to find out their meanings.
- Based on your preview of the article, what do you think is the central point of the article? (Don’t worry if you are not sure. This is a prediction or guess – you do not have to be correct as long as you are engaging your brain.) Record your prediction on the printed copy of the article.
- Based on your preview, do you predict that the article is narrative, expository, or argumentative?
Read Interactively
Now, read the article using the guidelines from the chapter on reading interactively. As you read, follow these steps to engage with the text.
- Pause to confirm or revise your predictions and to answer the questions you posed while previewing the article. Write down those revised predictions and responses to the questions as you read. If you cannot find the answers to your questions, save them for further resea