Erin Pollack
LAE 4464
Essentials List
January 2008
Three to Five Essentials List
Langer, Judith A. (Ed.) (1992). Literature instruction: A focus on student response. Urbana, IL: NCTE. 211 pp. (ISBN: 0-8141-3318-5).
Chapter One
The Background for Reform
1. “The typical literature classroom is organized around whole-group discussion of a text everyone has read, with the teacher in front of the class guiding the students toward a common or agreed-upon interpretation.” (pg.10)
2. There is a need for programs that highlight students’ ability to create and defend individual interpretation of literary works, as opposed to ones that only focus objectively on texts, authors, and vocabulary.
3. “If we are to shift the emphasis in instruction from the teacher and the text to the student and the process of understanding, then we need a much clearer set of theoretical principles to guide instruction.” (pg. 13)
4. More interesting programs of study, greater expectations, and higher-order skills need to be placed on non-college-bound students who usually received a watered down skill- oriented curriculum.
5. There is a need to expand the canon of selections for study, to better recognize the diverse cultural traditions that contribute to present-day American life.
Chapter Two
Testing Literature
1. State assessments and end-of-unit tests faced by middle/high school students in the U.S. concentrate on relatively low-level comprehension skills of a literary work. Though the nation’s testing programs devote energy to reading and writing, they fail to reflect the artistic aspects of literature and the cultural heritage of our society.
2. “We need to consider two issues: what do we mean by learning in literature, and what is the nature of difficulty in literature learning?” (pg. 22)
3. Alan C. Purves of the State University of New York at Albany poses that the domain of school literature can be divided into three interrelated aspects: knowledge, practice, and habit (preference). (pg.25)
4. “From these conclusions we derived an assessment of student learning in literature that would include the following measures:
- Measures of background knowledge (terminology and cultural info)
- Measures of the ability to read and to articulate a written response to at least two texts differing in genre
- Measures of preference including aesthetic judgment of texts, and general habits and beliefs concerning literature and its place in the world.” (pg. 31)
Chapter 3
Rethinking Literature Instruction
1. While the growth of logical thought has been the key focus in school course work, there is growing evidence that the processes involved in understanding literature are also useful and important in dealing with problems of everyday life.
2. “A literary orientation is one of exploration – where uncertainty is a normal part of response and newfound understandings provoke still other possibilities. Readers contemplate feelings, intentions, and implications, using their knowledge of human possibility to go beyond the meanings imparted in the text.” (pg.37)
3. During reading, there are a several stances the reader takes toward a text: being out and stepping into an envisionment (making contacts the text through prior knowledge and experiences) , being in and moving through an envisionment, stepping back and rethinking what one knows, stepping out and objectifying the experience (reflecting).
4. “Written assignments such as logs, ‘brief-writes,’ informal letters, and written conversations, in addition to more formal reviews, essays, and analytical papers, also encourage students to reflect on, state, defend, and rethink their responses.” (pg.43)
5. “Small-group discussions serve as an interim social environment, where students have an opportunity to take over the teacher’s role as they interact with each other. During these small-group work sessions, they are encouraged to treat each other as thinkers, following patterns of thought and interaction that have been previously demonstrated by their teacher.” (pg.50)
Chapter 4
Five Kinds of Literary Knowing
1. Knowing about self: “The significance of introspection and reflection on one’s own beliefs, one’s own place in the culture, should be recognized, and our teaching should invite and encourage such exploration.” (pg. 64)
2. Knowing about Others: If literary studies are to communicate cultural heritage, to help with the incorporation of the reader into society, then it seems reasonable to make an effort to get students acquainted with one another. “Literature should socialize, humanize.”
3. Knowing about texts: “It is important that students learn how texts work upon them, controlling and directing them, either intentionally or inadvertently.” (pg. 69)
4. Knowing about Contexts: “Meaning and significance depend not on the text alone or on the reader alone, but on the context in which reader and text come together as well.” (pg.71)
5. Knowing about Processes (of Making Meaning): Students have too often been handed pre-made, complete, and polished interpretations of a text, and too seldom been exposed to the tentative, hesitant, “get your hands dirty” process of making sense out of a text on their own.
Chapter 5
Challenging Questions in the Teaching of Literature
1. “…in terms of the multidimensional understandings necessary for the reading of literature, the content and conduct of the questions fall short.” (pg. 84)
2. One practice that has become all too common in the classroom is cutting the conversational sequence short. A teacher can initiate a question, wait for a hand to go up, hear a positive response, signal for the end of the discussion, and move on. Too often has the turn-taking pattern gone from teacher to student and back again, and not often enough between student and his/her peer.
3. To carry good class discussions: the learning outcomes should not be predictable, the floor should be open for a diversity of opinions, and the largest proportion of talk should come from the students. Students’ responses can build on each other and the teacher shouldn’t over direct.
Chapter 6
Teaching Literature:
From Clerk to Explorer
1. The curriculum clerk: “…these teachers rarely differentiate between teaching reading through literature, teaching reading along with literature, and teaching literature itself. They rely on materials, rather than on themselves, as the key to effective instruction.” (pg. 103)
2. The curriculum explorers: “Often identified as whole language teachers, they want to plan a more personal literature curriculum based on what they know about the specific group of children they are teaching and how they learn. They want to use instructional strategies that suit the particular piece of literature…they can enter with their students into an author’s world—each bringing personal strengths, interests, and intentions on the journey.” (pg. 106)
3. An example from the classroom: Written conversations (silent dialogues) are a great example of getting students personally involved. It provides informal communication where the dialogue can take a life of its own. Students often open up to one another when drawing on personal experiences and memories jarred by the literature. Teachers can use written conversation data for planning future lessons and discussion.
4. The role of the curriculum explorer involves making decisions about texts for exploration (providing students with authentic whole texts rather than abbreviated or contrived ones), organizing the classroom for “lived-through” experiences (planning instruction that values different student abilities, strengths, interests, and outcomes), documenting progress (both group and individual), and expanding professional knowledge.
Chapter 7
Literary Reading and Classroom Constraints:
Aligning Practice with Theory*
1. The reader’s role: “Activity goes much beyond decoding meaning; it involves ascribing intentions, considering analogical situations, and attending to the feelings and associations called up during the reading, including memories of other texts.” (pg. 134)
2. Readers’ expectations: many students decide before engaging in a work (a poem for example) that they won’t be able to make sense of it. Expectations like these could have come from teachers asking questions about a work before students have had time to recognize what the work has evoked in them.
3. Reading collaboratively: “It is the recursiveness of talk, by which I mean both a forward and backward flow, a recovering and revising of earlier observations, which makes it such a vital instrument for coming to understand one’s transaction with a literary work.” (pg.140)
Chapter 8
To Teach (Literature)?
1. “Teaching is a human drama, not a mechanical device, not a static space, as models [teaching models] force it to be, because it involves people interacting with people.” (pg. 164)
2. Though students are the more obvious subjects of teaching, teachers are also the subjects. Instead of being able to establish the links between theory and practice; teaching models are offered as an easy way out. No matter who is in their classrooms or what their agendas are, teachers can reproduce instruction class after class with the same mold. These models erase possibilities instead of creating them.
3. “The teacher’s problem in opening up ‘to teach literature’ as a field of play is a multifaceted one of posing questions that might allow students to formulate their takes on a text, constructing opportunities for students to critically exchange their takes, and then posing questions that beg self-reflexive readings of the already offered takes on the text.” (pg. 170).