Teaching Literature

american literature	british literature	multicultural/women's/world literature	lesson plans/course syllabi	drama/speech	shakespeare	young adult literature	literary genres/mythology
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CHAPTERS
1	Goals for teaching literature: What does it mean to teach literature?
2	Understanding students’ individual differences: Who are our kids?
3	Planning and Organizing Literature Instruction: How Do I Decide What to Teach?
4	Using Drama to Foster Interpretation: How Can I Help Students Read Better?
5	Leading Classroom Discussions of Literature: How Do I Get Them to Talk about Literature?
6	Writing about literature: How do I get them to write about literature?
7	Using narratives in the classroom: What’s the use of story?
8	Teaching text and task-specific strategies: How does the shape of a text change the shape of my teaching?
9	Teaching the Classics: Do I Have To Teach the Canon, And If So, How Do I Do It?
10	Multiple Perspectives to Engage Students with Literature: What are Different Ways of Seeing?
11	Teaching Media Literacy: What else is a text and how do I teach it?
12	Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning: How do I know what they’ve learned?
13	Text Selection, Censorship, Creating an Ethical Classroom Environment. and Teacher Professionalism: How do I Stay in Control, Out of Trouble, and Continue to Develop as A Teacher?

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activities

1. Conducting a case-study analysis of an adolescent. Select an adolescent that you have access to—someone in the school in which you are observing, a relative/sibling, or someone who you know. Interview this adolescent about their perceptions of school; the amount of time they devote to reading, viewing, computer use, game-playing, IMing, etc.; and their reading/viewing preferences or interests, making note of specific titles they mention. You could also ask your participant to respond to a text (You could also ask them to complete an interests survey—see below). (Note: if your instructor and/or institution perceive this as a “research project,” you will need to gain approval for doing a research project and have the student complete a consent form.) Using the student’s answers, discuss relationships between their perceptions of school and their reading and viewing habits. Discuss the appeal of specific titles in terms of the students’ reading/viewing interests. Draw some implications in terms of ways to further develop this students’ reading interests.

2. Reading autobiography. List some books that appealed to you in middle/junior high school, high school, and college. For each title, describe the specific aspects of a book that appealed to you and how that appeal reflected differences in your reading interests, needs, attitudes towards reading, and purposes for reading in middle/junior high school, high school, and college. Then, describe changes in your reading interests, needs, attitudes towards reading, and purposes for reading and how any school experiences influenced those changes. Reflect on the differences between your own current reading interests, needs, attitudes towards reading, and purposes for reading and those of your students.

3. Responses to young adult novels. Read some young adult novels and describe your responses specific aspects of characterization, plot, setting, language use. Predict the degree to which each novel would or would not appeal to early adolescents and reasons these novels would or would not appeal. Then, judge the literary quality of characterization, plot, setting, language use of each novel, citing specific evidence to support your judgments. Contrast the appeal and quality of each book, i.e., the fact that a novel may have high appeal even though you may judge it to have low literary quality, or vise versa.

4. Responses to characterization in young adult novels. Describe the characterization of main and minor characters in some young adult novels. Assess the degree to which these characters are developed through the use of subjective first person versus third person point of view, dialogue, descriptions by other characters, and use of setting/cultural contexts. Predict whether adolescents would be engaged with these characters and reasons for their potential engagement. Compare your analysis of the features of popular characters with those in the following study of popular characters in young adult novels:
Chance, R. (1999). A Portrait of Popularity: An Analysis of Characteristics of Novels from Young Adults' Choices for 1997. ALAN Review, 27(1). Retrieved August 23, 2005 from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/fall99/chance.html

5. Book reviews of young adult novels. Based on some young adult novels you have read write some short book reviews to share with other students in your class. Provide a brief summary of the storyline, focusing on those specific aspects of the novel that might appeal to adolescents. Then, provide an overall judgment of the appeal and quality of the novel, noting specific reasons for the appeal and quality. Share you reviews with your peers on a class Website, email, or by posting them on a bulletin board.

6. Comparison of an older versus more recent young adult novel. Read a young adult novel written prior to 1980, analyzing the novel’s language, story development, roles, settings, and implied cultural assumptions. Then contrast this novel with one written after 1995, noting the similarities and differences. Reflect on what you perceive to be changes in the genre over the time period represented in your two novels and how these changes may reflect historical and cultural shifts. If you consider your pre-1980 novel to be a “classic,” what aspects of that novel contribute to making it a “classic.”

7. Analyzing school districts’ book selections. In the local school districts in which you work, obtain a copy of the secondary literature curriculum that specifies the required texts used at each grade level or books recommended for leisure/summer reading. Describe your reactions to these book selections in terms of their potential appeal, literary quality, difficulty level, currency, and other factors that might shape these selections. Consider also the influence of state-wide textbook adoption policies (for example, in Texas and California) as well as the potential threat of censorship (see links in Chapter 13/Censorship link for lists of most frequently censored/banned books). Compare your listing with those from the following 2001 study of the top most required texts for 1982, 1990, and 1997 for grades 9 – 12
Hale, L. A., & Crowe, C. (2001). "I Hate Reading If I Don't Have To":
Results from a Longitudinal Study of High School Students' Reading Interest. ALAN Review, 28(3). Retrieved August 23, 2005 from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/v28n3/hale.html

8. Sharing responses to books with adolescents. Set up an online or IM’ing exchange with some adolescents about their responses to young adult novels. Have them share their reasons for liking or not liking certain novels. Share your own reasons with them. Then, compare your reasons with the reasons cited by adolescents, noting similarities and differences. What does this comparison suggest about choosing young adult novels for your students.
For examples of an exchange between university and middle school students, see Carico, K. (1997). Methods Students Write about Young Adult Literature with a Tenth-Grade Learning Strategies Class. ALAN Review, 24(2).)
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/winter97/w97-08-Carico.html

9. Studying a popular young adult author. Select a popular young adult author. Read information about this author, noting the different books written by this author, and the themes portrayed in these different books, as well as an author’s use of a particular genre. Also note some biographical aspects about the author that may have influenced the themes in these books. Then, prepare a brief presentation or Website about this author to share with your class and/or with students you’re working with.

10. Studying young adult novel genres. Select one young adult literature genre: mystery, romance, adventure, fantasy, comedy, horror, science fiction, etc., and research authors who write within this genre. Describe the specific features of this genre in terms of prototypical character types/roles, settings, storylines, and themes/value assumptions. Identity some titles that represent what you believe to exemplary representatives of this particular genre and describe reasons for your choice.
Genre booklists
http://www.uiowa.edu/~libsci/courses/144/SP2001_21144.htm#Assignments

11. Studying adolescent development/socialization in young adult novels. Many young adult novels portray the development of adolescents as they attempt to define their identities through demonstrating their competence or maturity in accomplishing certain tasks or goals. While initiation of adolescents were clearly defined in traditional societies and supported by mentors, in contemporary society, such initiations are less clearly-defined. It is also the case that, rather than defining themselves in terms of one autonomous “self,” adolescents learn to adopt different identities consistent with the demands of a particular social context or world often in terms of gender, class, or racial differences. To acquire practices and attitudes valued in these contexts or worlds, adolescents may be mentored in relationships with peers, family members, teachers, and other adults. Given the influence of these different socializing forces, adolescents often experience tensions between allegiances to peers versus adults, for example, experiencing conflicts between the need to maintain their “cool” image with peers by resisting adult norms versus conforming to adult expectations against what may be problematic practices with peers.
Select a coming-of-age young adult novel and analyze the ways in which the main character achieves a sense of their identities within different social contexts or worlds. Analyze the influence of other characters on the main character’s socialization and the criteria that serves to define successful display of competence in these contexts or worlds. Consider the ways in which gender, class, or race influences the main character’s socialization.

12. Develop a lesson plan for a young adult novel. Select a “teachable” young adult novel that you could teach to an entire class. Define some objectives for your instruction related to some topics, themes, ideas, issues, or worlds that are portrayed in the novel, as well as the use of certain critical lenses and/or certain literary aspects of the novel. Develop some specific classroom activities that involve students defining relationships between this novel and other young adult or “classic” novels (see the Kaywell series on thematic links between young adult and “classic” novels.).

13. Develop an individualized reading program. Devise a plan for developing an individualized reading program for a particular grade level. Discuss in detail your objectives; procedures for selecting books; communications to students, parents, and administrators; strategies for promoting books through book talks and displays; uses of reading-interests inventories; and methods of evaluating students. Describe how you would conference with students to help them share responses to books, define their particular interests in certain kinds of books, and then help them select other books.

14. Conduct a reading-interests survey. Conduct a reading-interests survey of a group of friends and/or students. Develop an interests inventory similar to one devised by Rachel Malchow (see below). (You may want to first pilot your items with some peers before administering the survey). Then, summarize your results for your particular group and define reasons for your students’ interests based on their age, gender, reading ability, access to texts, and intertextual links with media/games. Define some implications for setting up an individualized reading program or classroom instruction.

Literature/Media Interests Survey
Rachel Malchow, Champlin Park High School, Champlin, MinnesotaLiteracy Interests Survey

Please complete the following completely and thoroughly. The purpose is for me to start to get to know your history as a reader, viewer, listener, and writer both inside and outside of school.

Personal Reading

1. What types of reading material do you prefer outside of school, when you get to choose? Identify how frequently you read this type of material and then list some favorite titles, authors, or types in the space next to the item.

a) magazines