The purpose of this workbook is to give readers specific suggestions and ideas for expanding their interaction with the writing in Prison Voices. Exercises and activities range in difficulty in order to encourage readers at every level to interact with the texts and images, with a focus on meaning as well as on skills development.
Just as the teachers’ guide suggests general ways in which to expand thinking about the writing and photos in Prison Voices, this workbook offers very specific ideas designed to encourage readers to dig deeper and to bring their own experiences to the themes and content contained within the writing.
Although we hope learners will not use the workbook in isolation, and will have others with whom they read and discuss the texts, many of the activities suggested here can be undertaken individually. Some readers may be in classes or drop-in centers where teachers are also using suggestions from the Teacher’s Guide. In either case, every effort has been made to write directions as clearly as possible for this workbook, for those who are using it by themselves.
Begin by reading Prison Voices and find the stories that appeal to you. You might choose to read the book from cover to cover, you might be drawn to writing through the photographs, and/or you might be drawn to a particular title or author. The activities are designed to help readers strengthen their understanding of the texts as well as to encourage reflection on the writing – through continued discussion, writing or reading. Many of the exercises include a focus on a particular aspect of language or literacy, but the main concern is on meaning – on helping readers connect their experience to that of the writers and to spur them on to generating their own texts.
Many of the pieces in Prison Voices lend themselves well to being read aloud. Some people enjoy reading aloud, while others may feel self-conscious about doing so. If you’re studying with a group, you may ask a volunteer to read aloud, invite round robin reading (where each person takes a turn reading a sentence or paragraph) or you may read the piece aloud yourself. Many of us enjoy being read to – and many times we can ‘hear’ something in a piece of writing that we might not catch if we’re only reading it silently.
Some of the pages in the workbook include lines for you to write in your thoughts and ideas. Other pages contain questions that you can answer in a notebook or on a separate piece of paper. The workbook begins with some general questions and writing suggestions about Prison Voices and then moves to separate sections about each writer’s work.
The expansion exercises and activities suggested here touch upon possibilities that might appeal to adult readers. It is very likely, however, that educators working with this material will bring additional ideas to this work and thereby deepen its range so that readers of Prison Voices may well become writers to responding to other writers.