Say/Do September 14

(Re)Introducing Reader Response
Response & Analysis by Probst
Bridging English by Milner and Milner
The Challenge of Literature by Rosenblatt
The Lens of Reader Response
Responsive Reading Using Edmodo by Styslinger and Eberlin
Dimensions of Failure in Reader Response by Henneberg
Critical Literacy as Comprehension by Mclaughlin and DeVoogd

SAY:

Reader response is one of the things that we see come up again and again. After doing these readings, it is becoming clear why.  Reader response makes a lot of sense.  While it should not be the only thing that we do in our classrooms, it is a good way to get students to enter a text.  Having students find ways to connect to a text will make them interested more in reading, which is ultimately one of the things we want our students to love.

Robert E. Probst in Response and Analysis offers some interesting activities that we can use with our students.  The first activity involves having them write down the first word they think of whenever they hear another word.  This activity stuck out to me because it presents the opportunity to show them that when responding to literature there are no right or wrong answers, there are only the things in our lives that we connect to the literature.  Another idea presented here is that the reader is just as involved in the book as the author is.  Readers may have different views about a piece of literature based off individual experience.  

The ideas presented by Probst are similar to those of Rosenblatt, shown through his repeated quotes from Rosenblatt.  Rosenblatt talks about transacting with literature, which is the same thing as reader response.  She places reading in the center of all other studies.  Students can learn psychology by reading a novel that deals with that study.  Oedipus can be used to help study Freud for instance.  Rosenblatt also says that we can teach students about the human experience by having them read.  This is the reason that many people read in the first place.  They either want to see the problems that they are facing solved by someone in a story, or they want to read in order to experience the life of another person. Rosenblatt frames this as information versus experience in that sometimes we read in order to learn specific information, but other times we read as an escape.  We read as a way to experience a life other than our own.  By being involved with a text we become more aware and sensitive to the aesthetics that an author uses.

In The Lens of Reader Response I found that the most interesting section was the one titled “I am Not a Lesbian; I am Not a Jew.” This section discussed how students reacted to a text based on their own identities.  They were more likely to choose characteristics about themselves that said what they were not as a way of removing themselves from the book.  The book dealt with themes involving sexuality and Judaism, so the students made sure that they let it be known that they were not either of these things.  This is interesting in that it seemed that they felt they could not relate to a book if the main character did not share key features with them.  In the end, most seemed to learn something from the book, but others were still using their lack of relation as a reason for not learning anything.

Finally, I found the article Where We Are: Responsive Reading Using Edmodo particularly of interest because I am participating in it right now.  Not only am I responding to something, but I am doing it online, and after today, I will be able to respond to the responses of my classmates.

DO:

I chose to do this lesson because I think that with some of these canonical texts like The Odyssey have a lot of history and stigma attached to them. Something like this text is something that every student at the school has gone through and has told the people under them about. This allows us to test the title with what they think they know, and then to have them read on their own to see if what they have heard matches up to what they have read. The discussion after then allows them to see as a class what they have thought about the text, and if it were easier, harder, or more or less interesting than they had heard from their classmates. I added the say/do as a way for them to continue reading with others so that they do not get frustrated trying to read on their own until they are a bit further along in the story. I think that for the reasons of frustration, The Odyssey is also a good candidate for skipping parts and summarizing them for students. Many textbooks seem to do this by default by containing abridged editions and I think mine in high school included a graphic novel type story of the Trojan War. That was not included in this lesson, but would come further on.

Lesson Plan