Chapter 9: Reading in Service: Building Community, Scholarship, and Service Through College Reading

Students enter college with the desire to make a positive impact on the world. They are also likely to enter higher education with literacy skills that need nurturing and support if students are to succeed in college and positively contribute to the world. Combining academic content and reading instruction in a service learning framework provides the focus for reading and action and uses students’ energy to solve problems. This chapter describes an educational approach that places reading and content learning in the service of the community. This approach includes explicit reading instruction, focused on introducing students to information literacy and reading strategies for common forms of texts aligned with the stages of service learning.