Workshopping Narrative for "The Priceless Wealth of Friendship" Literature Unit

Workshop Narrative: Of Mice and Men

            When I think about workshopping a resource collection, the first thing I do is to think about the themes and essential questions I want my students to be accessing, discussing, and dialoguing. In the case of Of Mice and Men, I want to slant the collection towards the positive power of friendships and community—students come to school with varying levels of stress, difficulty, and challenges, so it’s important to me to make sure that even the difficult, “real-life-is-hard” texts are offered within a context of empowerment and personal self-growth. I don’t want to shield students from the dark themes found in difficult literature, but I do want them to see the potential for good—for growth—in whatever questions we’re asking and whatever themes we’re unpacking. I’m building a unit around the central ideas and essential questions of what characteristics make valuable friendships, and what power community and friendship play in determining our quality of life. Conversely, I want students to think about the potential negative impacts of isolation or solitude on the human life. In our current world, there are so many correlations between isolation and negative psychological issues; mass shootings, acts of terrorism against communities and civilians, human trafficking, sexual and emotional abuse in families… obviously, the list could go on and on. I feel that recognizing the harmful and complicated effects of isolation can be a powerful starting point for students to build empathy for students who might not be like them.

            I would start the unit with an anticipation guide of some sort, and I’d center it on the essential questions and topics of the informational texts. I chose informational texts that would work together in this way, because I want them to be the building blocks for our first “how to” lesson on Socratic seminars. I will have everyone read the two articles linking friendship and happiness, and then I will split the students into two groups and have them read either the Greek myth of Damon and Pythias (better for struggling readers) or the “Island Where People Forget to Die” article, which is much longer and written on a higher reading level (for my advanced kids). I’d like to transition from the anticipation guide to a Socratic Seminar where we can “practice” the form of it by discussing the anticipation guide and the articles. I think it’s important to access student’s prior knowledge and get them frontloaded to be reading for certain themes and motifs.

We’ll read the informational texts, poems, and songs as a class. What I mean is that we will all read all—the poems, songs (which I’ll use like lyrical poetry) and articles will all be read by all of the class. I’ll probably focus on the poetry elements as “break out” days or mini-lessons to use between whole class reading of OMM and lit circles. They’ll read the informational texts independently, but discuss them in a Socratic Seminar format.

I’d like to also include some historical informational texts about America during the 1930’s—I think I’ll create a one day lesson/powerpoint describing The Great Depression; that way, I can either do a direct instruction session during class time, or allow students to flip the class and experience the powerpoint-with-media at home before coming to class.

To facilitate response within and among students, I’m going to use a lot of questioning, small group questions during lit circles, and Socratic seminars at the beginning, middle, and end of the unit. I will engage students in open-ended questions as we read together, and I love the Say Something technique; it works great for both whole class reading and independent reading.

Because Of Mice and Men is only six chapters, I plan on reading the entire novella aloud during class. I believe this is an especially strong technique when there are struggling readers, and it will allow me to pause and ask questions or gauge reactions based on the moments I deem important. I will also create opportunities for reader response application activities on days we read aloud. In a unit spanning 3-4 weeks, I won’t be reading aloud for more than 6 days. I will make sure students have plenty of time to engage in guided, small group, and independent reading.

I’m going to frontload the unit with informational texts that allow me to discuss themes and big picture questions. I’ll use the literary texts to flesh out the application and discussion of those questions. I think a real “aha” moment for me was realizing that literature units don’t have to center on a canonical texts; my unit is really an effort to discuss and engage in the essential questions of community, friendship, the power of hope and the negative effects of isolation and selfishness. OMM is just one of the texts I’ll use to access the hidden curriculum of developing empathy and creating compassion for others. My YA novels will continue that curriculum.

I am so excited to use my YA books in my book clubs! I’ll make sure to do an “introduction day” where I’ll present the different options and have students write down their first and second choices. I chose YA novels with very diverse plots and characters, but similar themes. Some of the topics involve homosexual relationships, teenage illness, death, cyber-friendship, and historical WW2 spy fiction. I want to make sure students choose books they want to be reading, and I’ll make sure to have read all five (I’m thinking positively here) so that I can know exactly what they will encounter as they read. The book club idea is one I’ve learned from this course, and I love it—I can’t wait to spend Mondays in books clubs. I will also definitely be including a group multigenre project as an assessment project after the YA book clubs. After this course, I’m passionately committed to giving my students creative projects.

I am liking the idea of using the song lyrics as an independent reading activity, and I think I might want to include them as reader-response blog entries or a class wiki. I think I could create links to the songs on youtube and then have students respond to them by connecting back to the reading they’re doing in their YA novels, the short stories, poems, and OMM. I could do one song a week for a few weeks, and let those blog entries be a casual reader-response and connection back to the unit’s essential questions and ideas.

I’ll want to use formal analysis and critical synthesis with OMM, primarily, and with poetry, secondarily. I want to use close reading passages from OMM to invite my students to reflect on certain aspects of OMM: the treatment of Crooks as the only African American, the feminist questions about Curly’s wife who never has a name, etc. I’ll bring in some critical synthesis discussing these issues and then host a Socratic seminar midway through the novel. We meet Crooks in chapter 3, so midway is a great opportunity for Socratic. The poetry will be a great way to include literary elements, terms, and the style and structure of different writers, and I think formal analysis of a short poem is a very do-able single lesson for high school students.

            I want to make sure that anytime my students are reading independently or as a whole group, we are using some kind of reading strategy. There are hundreds and hundreds to choose from, so I’m just going to use pre, during, and post-reading strategies as often as I want and I’m going to use whichever ones I want.  I want students to collect a sort of “reading toolbox” that includes a wide variety of strategies. I’m drawn to strategies that allow for bookmarks, annotations or handouts—I’d have the students keep those in their reading notebooks for reference or use bookmarks with the books we’re reading… I’m also going to annotate the crap out of whatever informational texts we read. I mean, rather, that I’m going to have the students annotate their articles, but I’m also going to annotate along with them so I can model how personal and easy it is to engage the texts.

            I’m going to use the art to teach vocabulary and grammar! I’ll use them as bell-ringer activities where students will have to write sentences describing what they see, or where they’ll have to take a list of words, reflect on the art, and create a word poem or paragraph of description. 

We’ll study the craft of writing by selecting passages we love from any and all the texts we’re using --and doing close readings of them. The students will also use reading strategies that often require writing, and they’ll respond to art, music, and picture books through writing. I think I might have a day where we study the structure and style of our two picture books, and then I’ll have my students create their own picture books (using an app like Storybird.com) that reflect the themes or questions of our unit.

            I’m playing with the idea of having students watch the films as homework and, as they watch them, they’ll write down quotes they think are particularly significant for our unit themes. I like the idea of them watching movies at home with their friends or families and then compiling a Master List of Quotes that they can use to weave into their writing about other texts in the unit. I’m not sure of the film idea, but that’s an initial thought.

            I want the unit to be full of rich textual projects that are creative as well as analytical or argumentative. The students will work on multiple projects that reflect a wide variety of approaches to literature, and then they’ll select three pieces to include in a final portfolio. I’ll make sure that they each include at least one creative and one analytical representation, and then they’ll choose a third piece based on their personal preference towards one form or the other. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll have the do a kind of class presentation, or have them post their pieces in an online portfolio and invite them to share the links – I don’t know.

            I have learned SO MUCH this semester about creating and exploring a literature unit. The readings this semester have really opened my eyes to the many possibilities for creativity and student-choice application, and I’m very excited to teach The Priceless Wealth of Friendship in my classroom some day soon! J

Organizing Units with Literature

Herz, S. & Gallo, D. From Hinton to Hamlet: building bridges between young adult literature and the classics.
Assorted Authors, Blackboard Readings and Handouts.
Probst, Response and Analysis.

Say:

I think this week is a great example of a sample being worth a thousand words. Just like with the multigenre readings from last week, there are theoretical and research-based principles at work in the rationale behind organizing units with literature; also similar to last week is the idea that seeing samples of such units immeasurably helps teachers in figuring out the landscape of literature-based units and essential questions. I liked the variety of examples--there is a big difference between the essential questions and units for English 1 and the gender focus for AP English Lit, but they both reflect the practices of using multiple genres and varieties of text to organize around key themes and topics.

This graphic organizer is a stunning visual representation of the shift in thinking about unit organization. Notice how the organizer is not centered on a text; rather, the unit is centered around a core idea/theme or set of essential questions:


The chapters from Hertz and Gallo offer spectacular information for any teacher wanting to use YA novels to help students access the themes and questions posed by some of the most difficult canonical texts. The authors tackle canonical writers like Shakespeare and Dickens and address high school "required" books like Huck Finn and The Great Gatsby. Hertz and Gallo offer thematic connections to and well-written summaries of numerous YA novels relevant for literature units. I'm glad I did my Resource Collection before doing the reading for this week, because Of Mice and Men was one of the books they used in chapter 4! Haha -- I promise, my RC is of my own invention :) Hertz and Gallo's chapter five discusses entire units of genres, text choices, etc. They even include lists for internet websites, films and possible student activities like interviews! I also ADORE the archetypal ideas listed as possible themes for units -- I use a lot of these archetypes already, but it never occurred to me to structure a unit around the concept. AWESOME. I also like the idea of taking the "author paper" out of the AP classroom I've added From Hinton to Hamlet to my amazon cart; I've got to have this book. It's incredible.



Do:
Resource Collection: Of Mice and Men

Multigenre Musings

Romano, "Blending Genre, Altering Style"
"Create Flow"
Mary Styslinger, "Multigenred-Multigendered Research Papers"
Sara Biltz, "Teaching Literature Through the Multigenre Paper: An Alternative to the Analytical Essay"
Assorted Authors, BB examples, samples, bibliographies, and handouts

Say:
I'm coming back into this entry to revise some of my thinking based on tonight's class, specifically the concept of reader-response being the lining to the critical theories "coat" that Styslinger discussed. She mentioned that she thinks of theoretical approaches to literacy as different "coats" that she can put on as needed. I loved that analogy and will definitely be stealing it for my classroom. Now, obviously, anyone who spends any time with Dr. Sty quickly realizes that reader-response is her foundational approach to literature; she might put on different coats, but the lining of reader-response is always there. The reason I'm adding to this entry is because I realized through our conversation tonight that reader-response is my lining, too! I also think I double-line with formal analysis, but my go-to approach to any piece of reading or writing begins (and often ends) with reader-response. How could it not? Okay, addendum complete.

I had seen the multi-genre paper assignment in the syllabus and was quite reticent and unsure of it before this week's readings. I have never had personal experience with multi-genre, and I was nervous that it might be a challenging technological feat that was going to put me out of my comfort zone. Ha! Much to my delight, this week's readings take the concept of the formal, final assessment writing assignment and twist it full of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking to turn it into the multi-genre paper.

Romano is the expert on the multi-genre, and he argues that it is a more creative and holistic way to access student's authentic learning and processing. Multi-genre approaches assessment as a fluid and reflective process; it is narrative rather than expository or paradigmatic, which (by the way) is closely aligned with both reader-response and transactional theory, and posits that students can demonstrate deep, critical thinking about texts if they are given freedom to express that thinking in a multitude of ways. Rather than completing a typical argumentative five-paragraph essay, a multi-genre project requires students to think about the themes and characters of a text with more precision, focusing in on artifacts and "genres" to convey their critical reflection and connection.

Sty's article describing the use of multi-genre to access student's understanding of gender was fascinating. It really opened my eyes to the usefulness and THOUGHTFULNESS inherent in the multi-genre paper. Perhaps using narrative forms allows readers and thinkers to go deeper than they might go with the traditional expository assignment; because multi-genre distances students from the false notion that "one answer is the right answer," those students can be courageous and free in making meaning from texts. I loved the examples she included and I am trying to figure out how many ways I can use multi-genre in my teaching next semester.

The readings included fantastic samples of multi-genre papers, lists of types of genres to use for a project like this, and possible rubrics to allow students freedom but also provide them with focus. I've downloaded a bunch and saved them for future use. This week was incredibly pragmatic and helpful.

Final Thoughts: The multi-genre combines reader-response, formal analysis, critical theories, gender and race perspectives, and the student-choice prerogative that research has declared so invaluable to authentic learning--these ingredients simmer together, marinating in student creativity and freedom, and eventually become gourmet feasts the likes of which few educators see. (see what I did there?)

Do:
Lesson Plan Addendum: This is a lesson that bridged the end of a unit, so students were finishing their papers at different rates. My CT loved the idea of including 3 Mini Projects that allowed students choice and creativity! After reading about the multi-genre papers, I realized that my three mini-projects look a lot like 3 pieces of a multi-genre project, so I added this lesson plan to the Do. Here is the handout I used for the Creative Choice Project.
Sample from Student Poem:

I went looking for more on Tom Romano, because he seems to be the guru for multigenre. The chapter we read this week were from his 2000 publication, Blending Genre, Altering Style, but I wondered if he'd written more. Here is a link to his page on Amazon.com:

The amazon page includes all six of his published books, including one I think will be very useful for my teaching library, a 2013 publication titled Fearless Writing: Multigenre to Motivate and Inspire.  It looks really interesting:

Also, I kept looking and found a Tom Romano that was recently published (October 2015). This work seems to be on the topic of writing, and I'm wondering if it will join the ranks of writers like Stephen King who have written on the craft and practice of writing... Only one way to find out, right?

I'm including these books in my Do this week because I need to make sure I keep up to date on all the research happening in education; I want to keep adding good books to my personal teaching library. Ayers once said that teaching is intellectual, challenging work, and I'm determined to continue learning beyond the confines of this graduate program. 

Informational Texts

Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Michael W. Smith, and James E. Fredericksen: Get It Done!: Writing and Analyzing Informational Texts to Make Things Happen

Say:
Having spent several years teaching English 101 and 102 classes, I find it interesting that the first few chapters discuss "informational/ explanatory texts" using categories like cause-effect, compare/contrast, and definition. In my experience, these were all categories used to assign argument papers to first year college students. Arguments of definition papers involved debates about "marriage," what constitutes a "fair" judicial system, and whether certain leaders were "evil." Arguments of cause-effect might trace the influence of the past or argued that the road of today would lead to a certain kind of future. Arguments of compare and contrast evaluated and made cases for "the best" in sports, music, politics, or argued for a side in the age-old book vs. movie debate. My point is -- the three colleges at which I taught always focused the Freshman English assignments on argument, and used these categories to explain them. Until I started reading this book, I never considered these categories as anything but argument, although I can see now how they can be taught as informational/explanatory and why that approach would be useful. This book has given me a new perspective on something I thought I already knew pretty well. I love it when that happens.

Inquiry excites me. I love that this book gets into essential questions as the context for inquiry. The authors say that "inquiry, as we see it and research offers compelling proof, is the most powerful context for all teaching and learning and for all forms of reading and composing" (45). LOVE. I also see similarities between the book Understanding by Design and this one, because one of the ways we plan using essential questions is to think about what we want the culminating composing task to be, and then work backward to make sure we're preparing our students to be able to do it. Once again, frontloading is crucial, as we need to emphasize practice and make sure to offer frontloading that is both "conceptual and procedural" (49).

Chapters 6-12 are fantastic models of exactly HOW to take each category of informational text and apply it to the classroom. Especially useful for me were the chapters on compare/contrast, cause and effect, and I also really liked the one about lists. As I mentioned before, I'm used to teaching these with a more "argument-centric" approach, and it's incredibly helpful to have the authors describe the how-to's of each so well. There are also some pretty neat graphic organizers included in each chapter, as well as CCSS-aligned lessons. Awesome and useful tool to have for my classroom.

Do:
My CT uses a really neat annotation-practice each week called "Article of the Week." She's frontloaded annotation techniques with her students, and I even saw her revisit some of the frontloading lessons when she felt her students weren't annotating the articles sufficiently. The students are given a contemporary article from a major newspaper or newsmagazine, and they are instructed to read it, annotate it, and answer EOC-style questions about it (as continuing practice for the EOC). I love the results my CT has gotten from these weekly activities, and they've allowed the students to be a part of the ongoing real world discussions happening around sports scandals, scientific discoveries, politics, etc. I include a sample Article of the Week below.

Reading and Writing Argument

Michael W. Smith, Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, James E. Frederickson: Oh, Yeah?! Putting Argument to Work Both in School and Out

True life confessions: this has been my least favorite book so far.

Here's the thing--Smith, Wilhelm, and Fredricksen do a wonderful job explaining the importance of teaching argument in the classroom. They have powerful moments discussing student voice, the necessity of learning to argue and express oneself in a democracy, and they offer very practical ways to get started teaching argument by using popular culture and students' own opinions.

I think I'm  just very, very tired of reading-about-arguments after teaching Freshman English 101 and 102 for so many years; this book is a bit tedious and redundant for me, personally. (Obviously, it would not be redundant if I hadn't already been teaching, so I definitely see its value. I'm just taking a personal, metacognitive perspective on this week's reading--go with me on this.)

First, I'll get a bit confrontational.

Here's something I strongly disagreed with in one of the early chapters (chapter 2, I think):

"it's useful to think about the nature of oral argumentation to understand why it is that young people, who so effectively state their cases in conversation, have trouble doing so when they write" (Smith, et. al, 11).

WHAT?! Um, no. I could NOT disagree more. As a general rule, students canNOT state their cases in conversation -- that's why students who can are so delightful to encounter! It is not the norm. The students who CAN back themselves up in conversation can also, I have found, do it in writing. I know my experiences are not the only experiences, but I am honestly confounded and dismayed by what seems to me to be a ridiculous supposition. Have the authors taught outside of the 11th and 12th grade AP and honors system?  Geesh.

Now, some positive reflection:

I loved the precise, focused discussions taking place in chapters 7 and 8 on teaching literary argument and focusing on form. The authors take some of the most challenging aspects of teaching argument and break them down into examples and specific explanations I can use in the classroom. Obviously, argument takes reader-response level opinions and challenges students to explain and defend them with logic and rationale. These are critical skills on so many levels. Chapter nine has some really solid ideas for assessment, and I liked that the authors included rubrics to help us make sure our assignments fit our essential question purposes.

Do:
There are a LOT of graphic organizers to help students organize their argumentative essays. A lot of them are sort of cheesy and styled in ways that I'm not sure would appeal to high school students. I love infographics, so I went on a quest to see if I could find a good one to use with my students. I found this one on a lifehack page and I love it. Click on the image to get more information:

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/infographic-teach-you-the-hacks-write-argumentative-essays.html

Close Reading and Reading Like a Writer

Asst. Authors, Blackboard Readings: Rigor, Close Reading, Defining the Signposts,
Asst. Authors, Blackboard Readings: Reading like Writers, The Craft of Writing, Organized Inquiry, Craft Inquiry
Daniels and Steineke, Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles

This week's reading covers the sometimes controversial ideas of defining rigor and determining what constitutes close reading. Once again, we see the importance of knowing research, rather than relying on political propaganda or trendy, popular culture catch-phrases. Rigor, the darling term of many well-meaning politicians, does NOT refer to the difficulty level of texts. Rather, it "resides in the energy and attention given to the text, not in the text itself." A terrible example is given of an English teacher choosing the least accessible and most difficult version of Beowulf for her students to read. I found myself both disgusted by and condemning of such actions, and I was reminded of my passionate disdain for those who call themselves professional educators but behave like idiots.
In rigor as well as close reading, engagement is key. The text on rigor asserts that the "essential element in rigor is engagement"; this brings us full circle to Rosenblatt's theories on the power of reader response. Likewise, the full circle of responding to texts, moving into the formal analysis of texts, and then incorporating the critical synthesis of texts seems echoed in the readings this week, as "a classroom that respects what the students bring to it, what they are capable of and interested in, and that welcomes them into an active intellectual community is more likely to achieve that rigor."

I think close reading lends itself very nicely to Socratic Seminars because of the emphasis on shorter passages and the focus on using the text to support a reader's individual response. Students can help one another discuss a short passage and, hopefully, bring themselves closer to the text.

Defining the Signposts: I loved this explanation (reminds me of why we use "purpose" in our lesson plans): the signposts appear "not only in texts but also in our lives." These moments "show up in novels because they show up in the world," and the author points out that questions are only helpful to notice if the students can also learn to ask the right questions.  When teaching the signposts, "it's the question that moves students into deeper thinking."

* Contrasts and Contradictions: Why would the character act (feel) this way?
* Aha Moment: How might this change things?
* Tough Questions: What does this question make me wonder about?
* Words of the Wiser: What's the life lesson and how might it affect the character?
* Again and Again: Why might the author bring this up again and again?
* Memory Moment: Why might this memory be important?

Explaining the Signposts offers practical ideas for introducing each signpost into your classes, what texts might work best in teaching them, and how to organize mini-lessons that will help students add these strategies to their reading repertoire. Authors recommend teaching one at a time, but I liked the idea one English teacher had to teach all six at once, then read A Christmas Carol with her class. She used "Think Aloud" strategy to explain which of the six she was noticing as she read, and soon they were all chiming in. Apparently, A Christmas Carol is replete with all 6 signposts, and what a great way to introduce something new at the end of the first semester!

The beautiful truth regarding reading like a writer is that helping students find their voices will help US find ours as their teachers. The idea that one has to be a perfect writer in order to teach a student how to be a great writer is baloney -- we just need to collect examples of already powerful writers and allow our students access to them! Also, we need to let our students learn to read AS writers, which connects literacy to identity and empowerment. The craft of writing is a beautiful way to approach the teaching of writing. To indulge in reading the artful constructions of master writers and then construct our own writing in their image is to both enjoy and produce better quality writing. So many of these chapters echo our readings this summer about writing purpose, engagement, emulation and enjoyment. Shared reading, guided reading, inquiry craft exercises -- they all serve to empower our students to become more confident people as they become more confident writers and readers.

DO:

I used Pinterest to search for some Signpost bookmark ideas, and I hit the jackpot! I added links to each graphic, so click on the bookmark to go directly to the source! Here are some of my favorites:

1. A bookmark with short descriptions of each signpost.

2. A bookmark with annotation ideas! 

This allows students to take note of signposts without interrupting the flow of their reading.

3. This great bookmark includes the questions students should ask themselves with each signpost...

Online Book Clubs

Cassandra Scharber, Digital Literacies
Elizabeth Edmondson, Wiki Literature Circles Digital Learning Communities (my FAVORITE of the BB readings)
Diane Lapp and Douglas Fisher, It's All About the Book
Harvey Daniels and Nancy Steineke, Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles (Fantastic, Fantastic Resource for Teachers)

The online readings this week describe the concept of Book Clubs for an online format, and the focus for most of the BB readings inculcate the inclusion and use of digital technologies. The physical book for this week, Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles, offers incredibly useful mini-lessons to help teachers who want to begin literature circles but might be a bit uncertain how to teach the non-literary analysis aspects of talking and listening. In these readings, I see a combination of the theory and knowledge of reader-response and formal analysis with the research involved in literacy, as well as the research surrounding how we learn to talk and listen to one another.

The BB readings highlight the creative and highly-relevant approach of using technology to create online book clubs. Moodle is an web 2.0 product that allows Scharber to create pleasure-reading-focused book clubs. Students read a book of their choice (Lapp and Fisher also support the GREAT importance of student-choice in determining books for clubs and lit circles), then meet for a week online to answer discussion questions, chat live, and exchange ideas with other readers. These online book clubs are highly successful, as Edmonson also proves, because of their focus on utilizing students' "first language," which is now arguably digital technology. Edmonson quotes Prensky, who argues that today's students "are used to instant gratification when they have questions; they can process information at an extremely fast pace; and they prefer game-based learning with frequent rewards. Today’s teens also prefer graphics before text rather than the converse, and they thrive while multitasking and performing parallel tasks [...] Perhaps most notably, teenagers like to feel plugged into a network (Prensky 2)." Edmonson specifically utilizes wiki pages to allow her students digital "voice." I like Edmondson's handout titled "Daily Roles and Responsibilities." These Daily Duties are what the students use to create the online wiki; they read and take notes outside of class (sounds familiar -- like the currently popular flipped class structure) so that class time can be used for discussion. I need to revisit the figure detailing Edmondson's "Digital Learning Community Wiki Design," as she describes in detail how to construct and design each page of the Wiki. Great resource for the future!

Daniels and Steineke offer many different mini-lessons to help students experience the literature circle most effectively. Some of their lessons focus on initial community-building. This makes sense, as teachers are ideally constructing book clubs around book choice, but students often have trouble opening up to peers with whom they're not already friends. Teachers should make sure to offer some ice-breaking activities to help students get to know their new group members.The Membership Grid in chapter two looks fantastic for this activity; the students are able to "practice the same focusing and questioning that is necessary for an in-depth discussion about a book" (Daniels and Steineke 40).

One of the great features of Mini-Lessons for Lit Circles is the way the mini-lesson chapters are structured. Each one is clearly titled and includes the time needed (explanations are made in the first chapter for the average length of classes that works best with these mini-lessons). The mini-lesson has a "Why Do It?" explanation preceding the how-to of each lesson.  Samples, both of handouts and from students, are also included. Another great feature of Daniels' and Steineke's book is the "What Can Go Wrong?" feature at the end of each chapter/mini lesson. This helpful section exemplifies why Daniels and Steineke have sixty-two years of teaching between them--they are able to help readers predict and prevent classroom situations from getting sticky.

What is extraordinary about MLfLC is that it is a TEACHING book -- it shows teachers exactly how to shape and create the dozens of small lessons necessary to create a classroom lit circle that works. Teachers can use this book to write one or two mini-lessons, or to flesh out the creation of an entire unit! The book obviously reflects the theory and research discussed in the first chapter, and it is written in clear, concise prose that integrates pragmatism and humor.

Do:

I found this chart in the BB reading about Grading Literature Cirles and I think it simplifies the process well! There is a space for each student's name, a way to check that they "prepared for discussion" and "participated in discussion" and then a space for notes. This reading also showed how to help a class create the book club rubric, and how to teach them to assign value to each criterion. This chart is an easy way to keep track of students, and might help when communicating with parents through conferences or concerns.

Book Clubs

Cindy O'Donnell-Allen, The Book Club Companion: Fostering Strategic Readers in the Secondary Classroom

Say:

I think that Cindy O'Donnell-Allen is my spirit animal. Her thoughtful, warm, articulate book titled The Book Club Companion is quite possibly the most helpful thing I've read this semester. O'Donnell-Allen discusses the theoretical and research-proven reasons why book clubs are essential for student literacy, but she also delivers a pointed, useful and extremely pragmatic road map to incorporating book clubs into the secondary classroom. She has an obvious resonance with teachers, and writes from an "insider" perspective; unlike some educational theorists, O'Donnell-Allen does not write to hear herself talk. As she mentions in the introduction, she writes this book because a friend encouraged her to get down on paper what she's been doing for a decade in class. The result is an good read for anyone interested in the specific and strategic implementation of book clubs in the secondary classroom.

What I find so thrilling about O'Donnell-Allen is her incredible breadth of knowledge about all things literacy. Reading her book was almost a review of all the material we've read during this semester! She discusses the roots of book clubs as aligning well within the foundation of reader-response criticism, but offers ways to develop responses so that students move into formal and critical analysis. "How do we engage students and maintain rigor at the same time?" she asks. "Must we sacrifice one goal for the other?" (76). I'm telling you: I love her.

O'Donnell-Allen also centers the entire idea of effective book clubs (and, therefore, students becoming more strategic readers and writers) around educational research arguing that students must have safe, emotionally-stable environments in which to learn. She describes how the addition of book clubs to the secondary classroom can immediately help create learning environments which are student-centered, collaborative, constructionist, and inquiry-based! Book clubs seem seriously grounded in all of the research and pedagogy we've been reading this semester. O'Donnell-Allen, then, does what great educational writers do so well -- she writes clearly, grounds her ideas in sound and practiced pedagogy and research, and offers implementation how-to's that can guide both beginning and veteran teachers.

O'Donnell-Allen's devotion to Vygotsky's "zone of proximal development" is especially profound when she connects it to the research of the past twenty years regarding adolescent needs. She discusses the "social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge-building dimensions" of classroom life, and explains how these are encouraged, fulfilled, and conditioned by the use of thoughtfully-constructed book clubs. She discusses the ins and outs of practical implementation--her passages on sequencing and recursivity are especially helpful--and offers loads and loads of organization tips and APPENDICES so that I can actually DO what she's done for decades.

I've had loads of experience with Socratic Seminars, but I never truly understood book clubs before O'Donnell-Allen. I misunderstood lit circles, small-group discussions, and book clubs to be the same animal, but O'Donnell-Allen clearly explains, delineates, and expounds on book clubs in ways that convince me that I've never truly done a book club. I'm tremendously excited to try them in my own classroom!

Do:
Lesson Plan Addendum: Here is a quick mini-lesson on choosing a book for SSR I was asked to do by my CT -- the structure is self-exploratory, and students had a good "jumping-off place" for finding possible reads. This occurred in a one-to-one class, so every student had an ipad with ereader!

For my own classroom, I will use most of her appendices to do THIS:

"A week or so before the first book club session, you've given your book talks and students have submitted their top three choices. Based on these choices and your instincts about social dynamics, you've organized students into book clubs and announced who will be reading what. Students have made a reading schedule and met in their book club to devise a set of book club norms. You've also selected a response tool [there are ten awesome ones] students will use to record their reactions to the text and stimulate exploratory discussion. The only task that remains is to teach students how to use the response tool [...] Once you're confident that students understand the reading schedule, how book clubs will run, and how to use the response tool, they're ready to start reading. A week later, book clubs can begin" (91-92).

What fantastic tools she offers in the detailed appendices. Incredible. Oh, and guess what I just found? Cindy O'Donnell-Allen writes a blog. Yup.  Here it is:

https://blogessor.wordpress.com/

Enjoy :)

Fostering Talk Around Literature

M. Copland, Socratic Circles
Styslinger and Pollock, The Chicken and the Egg
Styslinger and Overstreet, Strengthening Argumentative Writing with Speaking and Listening (Socratic) Circles
Dr. Vicki Gibson, The Common Core Standards on Speaking and Listening
Milner and Milner, Developing an Oral Foundation
Various authors: assorted guidelines, rubrics, questions, handouts on Socratic Seminars
Robert Probst, Response and Analysis
Robert Probst, Tom Sawyer, Teaching and Talking


The main focus this week is on talking--how to teach our students to do it, how to assess it, and how to use it to allow students to gain a more critical and sophisticated understanding of texts. Socratic seminars are discussions around text that minimize the influence of direct instruction and lecture and, instead, allow students to form communities of learning that promote individual expressions of engagement and analysis. There are many ways to organize a Socratic Seminar, but the premise is built on at least two groups of students who explore talking and listening in turn, and who are not dependent on a teacher to lead the discussion. Socratic "circles" can be incredibly effective in promoting high level thinking and formal analysis, as well as encouraging all students to respond in some way to a group-read text. The goal of a Socratic seminar is to avoid what some scholars have called "recitation" and instead promote the kinds of "authentic discussion" we would like to be "the common mode of discourse in most classrooms" (McCann, 2006).

The readings raise some interesting possibilities regarding how a teacher might be able to interact with a text in front of her students without being perceived as the authority. A usual Socratic seminar discourages the teacher from intervening in conversation, unless it is to clarify or unpack how the students are discussing. I think it's Probst who says that if a teacher has the kind of relationship with her students where she is able to offer opinions that do not "ring" of authority, she might be able to engage in this kind of talk. The key is classroom community--both for building a positive and supportive atmosphere in which to conduct a Socratic Seminar as well as for being part of such a discussion without students feeling they need to take notes.

I have facilitated many Socratic seminars and I think they're fantastic. I definitely wait until the classroom community is established, explicitly teach them how I want the seminar to run, and then we get started. I have found SS to be especially powerful with certain groups of students; I had an honors class that regularly blew me away with their SS discussions. They were, in fact, able to use a lot of the SS conversations as foundations for their literary analysis papers on Frankenstein. I think SS is worth the time and research to set up and facilitate. Students love it, and authentic learning comes from authentic talking.

Do:
I really like the activity called "Finding the Poem" that Probst suggests using as a beginning-of-the-year ice breaker. You need a few simple poems -- to make the activity with groups of four students, you'll need several poems with four stanzas each. Probst suggests, "print one stanza of each poem in a large, readable font on an index card. Shuffle the cards together and distribute them to students. Then instruct students to move around the classroom, introducing themselves to each other and comparing stanzas until they find another that seems to fit with theirs. When two students have found a match, they continue to roam as a pair until they find the rest of the poem. When the students are satisfied that they have complete poems, ask them to sit together in their group and put their stanzas in what seems to be the right order. Then you might ask each group to read its poem aloud and tell you something about why they settled on that order of stanzas" (49).

Finding the Right Balance: Formal Analysis

Styslinger, Ware, Bell and Barrett: “What Matters: Meeting Content Goals Through Teaching Cognitive Reading Strategies with Canonical Texts”

Milner and Milner, “Formal Analysis”
Kylene Beers, "When Kids Can't Read"

Kelly Gallagher, “Readicide”

Say:

I see the importance of fostering students’ metacognition to help them see themselves as competent readers. In the article, "What Matters," three secondary teachers use the same cognitive strategies across several different canonical texts. I appreciate the artifacts presented and particularly liked Jesse’s chart asking students to list 5 challenges they came across while reading and what strategy they used to move past the challenges. One personal resistance I have discovered about reading strategies is the use of multiple texts at one time. I can see using a poem, article, etc, while teaching a novel; however, asking students to read two novels at a time is an unappealing idea to me because I do NOT enjoy reading more than one novel at a time. I wonder if this is a hard and fast rule (that teaching strategies/literary elements must happen across synergistic novels), or if I may be able to help my students become better readers by using one novel text and multiple smaller texts.

I feel confident in my formal analysis skills and I enjoy helping students develop theirs. There is always room for improvement, and I’m no guru, but I do have a strong analytical bent that comes in handy for teaching formal analysis in fun ways. I like how Milner and Milner argue that we need to “seize the teachable moment,”(144) because THAT MOMENT is the goal. I try to build lessons that ask the kinds of questions that lead my students to formal analysis, and I love that Milner and Milner assert that a teacher “should be alive to literature” in order to show students how formal analysis works; principally, that “formal analysis should originate in your own considered pleasure and understanding of the way in which literature works” (150). I love this whole idea – that the teaching of literature increases my love for literature and my ability to formally analyze it. I’ve been teaching English for eleven years, and I can wholeheartedly agree with this truth.

Cultural literacy: a controversial concept and one that is not going away anytime soon. I think that I am, for the most part, on the side of Gallagher. I just happen to think that our cultural literacy should include works that reflect us as a diverse and multi-cultural society. Gallagher nicely points out that there are strong benefits to having a society where every student has read and discussed certain texts. I very strongly agree with Gallegher when she says, “Hamlet isn’t the problem. The problem lies in how the work is taught (or how the work is not taught)” (92). I think the teacher is the sweet spot—we introduce rigorous texts by framing. We scaffold. We provide focus and purpose. While reading Gallagher, I realized that I teach novels exactly as she does—with the big chunk/little chunk approach. I have always found it to work magnificently, whether I’m teaching honors or regular level classes, secondary or higher education courses. Readicide is one of my favorite articles so far; as controversial as some of her statements are, I find that Gallagher's ideas, methods, and strategies resonate with me. I need to see if she’s written any full-length texts.

Do:

One book that I have found INCREDIBLY significant for my teaching of formal analysis is Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor. I have used this text in my high school honors classes and my college classes. Sometimes, I have had students read it themselves—but other times, I have synthesized his main ideas with examples from media, music, and film and created PowerPoints to accent whatever texts we’re working on. I have a dog-eared copy of Foster, and I recommend him unreservedly. You can order Foster here.

Inviting Other Theoretical Perspectives

Milner and Milner, Critical Synthesis in Bridging English
Appleman, Critical Encounters in High School English

Say Do Sept 21, 2015

I first encountered literary theory as an English major in the late 90’s. I remember finding the various theories vastly confusing and daunting, and I now think my dismay was the result of improper scaffolding. I approached theory as though one literary approach was “best” or “right,” and it was not until entering graduate school in 2003 that I began to see literary criticism as a lens. Milner and Milner offer a well-written, concise, and thoughtful discussion of the various lenses of critical synthesis, grounding the entire dialogue in classic roots. Personally, I felt their explanation of critical theory to be profound and powerful; I had never considered Aristotle and Plato as the original source of criticism, and I love the idea of “opposing but equally helpful” views being their legacy. Milner and Milner’s overview of the differing lenses was very good, I thought, but I have now been studying theory for the past decade and a half; while reading, I wondered if their synopsis would be as useful for a new student of literary criticism. It will be interesting to see what people think in class tonight…

I will need to buy a copy of Appleman’s Critical Encounters because I found it interesting, philosophical, and highly relevant to my own experiences inside the classroom. The chapters for today focused principally on two of the most controversial lenses of literary criticism: feminist and Marxist. What I liked about the chapters (and introduction) was the obvious way that being comfortable with and teaching literary perspectives in the high school English classroom can raise expectations for student learning. While teaching Hamlet, Michael found several activities to help his students think critically about how their own power and privilege impacted their reading of the text, as well as how power is a central conflict of the play. Looking at classical feminist texts and using a feminist lens to look at ANY text resonated with me as a teacher, as I regularly use “The Yellow Wallpaper” and The Awakening to demonstrate the necessity of a feminist lens.

The tricky part of teaching literary criticism as “lenses” is that we are stating that there is no absolute truth concerning literature, and this concept is very easily misunderstood by many students, parents, and communities as an OVERALL attack on traditional values and religious beliefs. I think it is essential that we ground our students in the idea that the varying lenses help us understand TEXTS more clearly, and that we may use the academic discipline of criticism without losing a personal religious foundation or anchor. Learning to see the world from differing perspectives does not mean that one cannot have a personal worldview. I think it is important to look at texts with Marxist criticism, but I am far from being sympathetic to political communism. I think the effectiveness of literary criticism in my secondary classroom depends greatly on how I approach it with my students. The “lens” approach offered by Milner and Milner and Appleman is my favorite scaffold for students trying on the different glasses of literary criticism.

Say:
I am including a powerpoint I created to help students think about "The Yellow Wallpaper" through both formal analysis and critical synthesis. The questions came from the textbook, An Introduction to Literature by Barnet, Burto, and Cain. This powerpoint allows me to ask different questions for different stories. I can vary class discussion or engagement by "checking" different questions for us to discuss in class or within small groups. I also add my own questions based on what I'd like us to think about together.

Analyzing "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Mea Culpa for Tonight's Class!

Hey everyone,
I just wanted to publicly apologize to Dr. Styslinger  and all of you for my behavior tonight. Taking up valuable class time to get into a heated debate about reader response was not appropriate and I'm sorry. I love discussing theory and perspective, but I used really poor judgement tonight by not waiting for an appropriate venue (ie: after class or on my blog) to debate. It was disrespectful to Dr. Sty and to ya'll -- please forgive me.
I love our cohort and look forward to next week!
Have a great week, everyone.
Blessings as you teach!
Rosina

(Re) Introducing Reader Response

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. -- Franz Kafka

Reader response theory is one of the most popular approaches to literature in the classroom setting. In her seminal work, "Literature as Exploration," Rosenblatt describes and delineates the origins and philosophy of reader response criticism. She describes how a reader’s interaction with text is “never to be duplicated”; it is always individualized in its potency. The rest of today's texts continue Rosenblatt's work -- they build on her philosophies while offering current methodology and rational for the most useful applications of RR in today's literary classroom.

In the "Lens of RR (ch. 3)", the author gives insightful discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of RR.  "Lens" argues that RR must be taught both “explicitly” and as “one of a variety of theoretical approaches” in order to cement its place as a entry point into higher-level analysis. The writer references Rosenblatt’s ideas and theories to discuss the positive and powerful ways students can use reader-response to make analytical textual meaning. Two detailed examples are given from the real world of the classroom novel: Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound and Native Son. The author explores student responses to both texts to demonstrate the power of explicit reader response teaching pedagogy as well as some of the inherent difficulties in this approach

Styslinger and Eberlin's "Responsive Reading Using Edmodo,"offers a practical, useful conversation about how to best incorporate reader response approaches to 21^st century one-to-one technologies.  They discuss and describe student reactions to the use of Edmodo and find interesting questions for further study.

In her article, "Dimensions of Failure in Reader Response," Henneberg stands out as unashamedly facing the difficult work of engaging “alternative” adolescents in the reading of classroom texts. She uses her 17 years in the English classroom to unpack some very real situations that face English teachers, and discusses how a professional development seminar by Sheridan Blau gave her tools necessary to equip her students. I especially liked this list of “prerequisites” Blau argues students must have “before they can successfully participate in reader response activities”:

1. Capacity for sustained focused attention.

2. Willingness to suspend closure-to entertain problems rather than avoid them.

3. Willingness to take risks-to predict and be wrong, to respond honestly, to offer variant readings.

4. Tolerance for failure: willingness to re-read and re-read again.

5. Tolerance for ambiguity paradox, and uncertainty.

6. Intellectual generosity and ego-permeability: willingness to change mind, to appreciate alternative visions, and to engage in methodological believing as well as doubting.

(Sheridan Blau, 1994, "Literary Competence and the Ways of Knowing: A Theory for Practice in the Teaching of Literature.” Unpublished manuscript.)

The article ends by offering fantastic, pragmatic ways to incorporate reader response into the alternative classroom.

"Critical Literacy as Comprehension: Expanding Reader Response" by Maureen McLaughlin argues that students need to learn to read critically. McLaughlin describes that "the goal is for readers to become text critics in everyday life—to comprehend information sources from a critical stance as naturally as they comprehend from the aesthetic and efferent stances.” She has very purposeful, specific examples of critical literacy, and includes several reading lists of books that evoke critical literacy responses.

"Do"
Here is a great reading lesson I did using the Say Something reading strategy handout!

One of the ways I'd like to weave reader-response into my classroom is through multimedia and artistry. A fantastic app (or website) for this approach might be storybird.com. Storybird.com allows my students to match their writing to illustrations. They can also take a poem and select art and illustrations with which to align each line or stanza. The website is easy to use and offers thousands of high quality illustrations, searchable by key word. Here are some examples of poetry set to images; here are some examples of stories set to illustrations. The beauty of a website like storybird is that it allows students to have very individualized, specific responses to literature and poetry. It also allows for creativity and the creation of texts. Storybird.com is a creative way to utilize reader response theory in the secondary classroom!

Transacting with Literature -- "Directing vs. Exploring," Rice, Haskins

SAY:

A few days ago, a friend posted an internet article she'd read on FB and tagged me with the question, "Thoughts?" The article was a political analyst's discussion of the differences between a reading list found from 1908 and a reading list from 2014. The analyst argued that the YA literature on the 2014 list was proof positive of today's declining educational system. Decreasing skills and dumbed-down educational practices were argued as the primary causes of the reading list differences. I replied to the article with some thoughts on reading and the teaching of reading, and a lively discussion ensued between several other people (all purveyors of the classics-only approach to literature) and my own assertions that both scholarly research and classroom practice point to a more diverse, scaffolded approach to reading texts.

Of course, the analyst was not an educator and knew nothing about the theories of reading and learning that serve as the crux of this week's reading assignments. I mention this FB debate-incidence because it was a fresh reminder that discussions about WHAT students read are often more controversial than the primary question I think most educators face, which is WHY students DON'T read. This week's topic, Transacting with Literature, deals with such issues. Although looking at young adult literature, graphic texts, and student-led inquiry texts seem like different approaches, they are very similar in their focus on the student as the maker of textual meaning.

In Mary Rice's article about using graphic texts, she describes how easily students are engaged by them, but also discusses some of the ways teachers need to be prepared to handle some of the more controversial aspects of the graphic novel. Their cost is high and is usually not covered by a school's curriculum budget; they rip and tear easily, which requires frequent replacement; and they often contain controversial themes, adult content, or hyper-feminized or hyper-masculine depictions of gender norms. Her article includes actual classroom examples, graphic novel recommendations, and personal recollections of her own experiences teaching graphic texts.  It was insightful and helpful, as I'd never considered many of the pitfalls/benefits to TEACHING graphic texts -- as opposed to just making them available as sustained silent reading materials.

I’m not saying young adult literature should replace the literary canon. At the same time, if I can use YAL to help make reading enjoyable, my students stand a better chance of someday appreciating The Scarlet Letter and Ethan Frome. And even more importantly, they stand a better chance of leading literate lives. -- Jeannette Haskins,"Making Magic with YAL"

Haskins offers a humorous and engaging perspective on her personal journey with YAL, as well as describing the immensely powerful ways she's seen it help her students find reading enjoyable. Haskins reads young adult literature herself and is able to pinpoint students' preferences to help captivate them as readers. She discusses tools she uses to find out student interests (like a reading profile, interview, etc) and then impresses me as a reader by reciting at least half a dozen YA books that can fit that kind of personal interest! Haskins has obviously been reading YA for a long time, and her scope and breadth of the subject matter is impressive. Her students become better readers and come to really enjoy reading, too, and that is, indeed, the classroom magic we all want to see.

The chapter on "Directing vs. Exploring" was my favorite text from this week because it focuses on the importance of allowing students to become "lovers of literature." Carlson's five stages of developing readers are introduced and discussed. Knowing what topics students find interesting as they progress through adolescence can help teachers make informed choices and offer multiple student options for engaging reading. Transactional theory helps us understand that literature can create citizens of the human experience and of the world -- people who know who they are as well as having a compassion and empathy for others. Response-based teaching allows me as an educator to be fully committed to listening and learning from how my students respond to what they are reading. Probst offers useful, helpful scaffolding techniques to allow YAL to engage students into discussions and transactions that will allow them to access more difficult, canonical texts. 

DO: 

One of the most inspiring activities my internship teachers did this week was an activity we called "Meet the Press." The seniors are reading Macbeth, and this activity was designed to help them "get into character" from what they've seen of acts 2 and 3. I found this activity to be fun and helpful because the teacher could informally assess whether students were reading with comprehension, but the students were the ones making meaning of the play and offering creative and insightful answers from the different characters' perspectives. Here is the handout of the activity:

Meet the Press Macbeth Activity