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