Adolescent Literacy by Beers, Probst, and Rief
Teaching YA Lit by Mike Roberts
Using Graphic Texts in Secondary Classrooms by Mary Rice
Directing Versus Exploring
SAY:
Transacting with literature is about more than students just reading a text. In order for a text to be meaningful to the students they need to be able to get something from the text and in a sense, to give something back. Transactional theory is closely related to reader response because it requires readers to respond to literature before they can make meaning of it. The text needs to matter to them, or they need to be able to relate to it in order to care. Students will not read anything we give them if they do not care about the subject matter.
One of the ways that we can get students to care about reading is to start them out on books that they can relate to. This is the point of Mike Roberts’ “Teaching Young Adult Literature.” He gives the example of a student who believes reading is not for him asking for a book recommendation. This student believes that he is not made for reading because his experience with reading in the past has shown him that the books he’s been forced to read have not been made for him. Once we find a book that relates to a student they begin to see that reading is not all that bad. If they like one book, we are able to push them in other directions. The way that we find out if they like the books is by having them respond to them in reading journals, or class book clubs. From these young adult books that students care about, we can move them into the classics that we are expected to teach.
I was excited to read Rice’s novel about using graphic novels because this is something that I plan on doing. Comic books and graphic novels are what got me to start reading in middle and early high school. I remember watching V for Vendetta and then going out and buying the graphic novel. This article brought up different points about using graphic novels that I had not thought of, specifically the price. I want to use graphic texts in my classroom because they are popular, and for the same reasons I had for YA above, but I can’t do that if I cannot find money. Another thing I like about graphic texts is that students can actually see a representation of themselves in the book. It’s important to learn about your students in order to choose which of these texts to use.
I think that motivating students is important and with that comes finding them something that they want to read, because if we just give assigned reading, they are not going to do it. In my coaching teacher’s classroom last week she did something similar to the book pass. She does not have enough books currently, so she had student browse book lists on their chromebooks and come up with a list of the top ten books that they found. They seemed to be invested in finding the books, and I walked around with my CT trying to help them choose books by reading summaries, looking at covers, and talking to them about other things they like. I think that the best way to get students transacting with literature is to have them choose what they read.
DO:
The lesson that I have come up with comes largely from the reader response from Milner and Milner. I want the students to begin interacting with a text before they have started reading it. The text that I chose is A Sound of Thunder. Ideally, in my classroom, I would be able to have students choose their own texts, as I said in my Say portion, but as I am working in someone else's classroom I have decided to use the short stories that we are doing this week. I will have students answer a writing prompt about a time in their lives related to the story, and then we will go into discussion. This way, they are now thinking about that time in their life, and are able to relate more closely to the text. I will then perform an At the point of utterance reading, stopping when the main character needs to make decisions to discuss with the students what they think he should do based off their experience, and the experiences of those that they have talked to. We will conclude with an exit slip having them write about what they had just read, and what they thought about the protagonists decisions.
Transacting with Literature Lesson Plan
I really appreciate that you are trying to make connections across the assigned readings--I can hear you making connections and ironically, drawing upon your own experience with graphic novels a la reader response, to make sense of it all. FYI--transactional theory is just another name for reader response theory--same theory--Rosenblatt actually preferred the term transactional--I enjoyed reading through the lesson plan and seeing the theory turned into practice--my suggestion for next time is to connect across all the readings--what of Tatum? Or the excerpt from Hinton to Hamlet?
ReplyDeleteWill, as you know by now, I am someone who absolutely believes that it is very important to have a solid transaction with literature in the classroom. In order for students to get hooked on the books we want our students to read, you must allow some type of process to flow in which they are able to connect it (the text) to something relevant to their lives. I loved your DO because you allow this to happen for your students in your LP. Great job. One thing I wanted to ask was how would you begin these conversations? That can be the tricky part.
ReplyDeleteWill,
ReplyDeleteI like your point that YA can be used to bridge students into the classics. I'm curious to see what you think is an appropriate balance/approach to utilizing both texts at once. I also very much like the element of personal response in your LP.