Entry 4: Finding the Right Balance

Kelly Gallagher, Readicide

Folder of Literacy Student Engagements

Bridging English, Ch. 5

When Kids Can’t Read

Reading Better, Reading Smarter

Mary E. Styslinger, Julianne Oliver Ware, Charles W. Bell, and Jesse L. Barrett “What Matters: 

Meeting Content Goals through Teaching Cognitive Reading Strategies with Canonical Texts”

I’ve always liked Gallagher’s writing, as he tends to state things that seem like they should be super obvious, but one might never think about the fact that there is a process in learning to teach them. Gallagher reveals how there are two ways of ruining reading instruction: overdoing it and underdoing it. Whether students like or dislike the book is not an issue so much as getting value from it. To avoid both, challenging texts need to be framed, and this framing often comes in the form of a reading “goal” for the students to be aware of. A teacher can slow down and introduce themes on the second read through of a section, or read aloud and pause to reflect and understand. The way this is done guides how students who are following along read the text alone.

The Styslinger et al. article has a related goal: “we wanted to deepen student comprehension, but we wanted to do so in ways that aligned with our commitment to study the matter and art of the literary works as well” (54). The article shows the results of several employments of cognitive reading exercises in various classrooms. These examples demonstrate what Gallagher was saying pretty clearly. The students were able to read complex texts with modeled cognitive reading strategies. The article points out some issues, such as the concern that teaching strategies in a vacuum could lead to them not recognizing other contexts to apply the strategies in; it is also possible to inundate students with strategies or to overemphasize strategies over the content of the text. My personal feeling is that strategies are ideally taught on a case by case basis. Students could be identified as needing support in visualization and then made to do the visualization exercises. That seems like a simple conclusion; the point is that the technique we utilize is not chosen at random or merely to satisfy a standard.

This week I reviewed many of the pre-, during-, and post- reading strategies in our various textbooks. One thing I had forgotten about this section of Bridging was the claim that “the debate over teaching literary form strongly resembles the debate over teaching grammar” (143). Isn’t it strange that there are so many aspects to our content area we have to justify teaching? Of course, my experience in internship so far has shown that even if we thought this was totally useless, the state would be having kids take standardized tests over it. Fortunately, it has also seemed like creating engaging formal analysis lessons is less difficult than I had anticipated, at least when framed properly. My CT introduces her kids to a swathe of literary devices in a long power point presentation, but each slide is interactive and asks the students to locate examples of formal elements in literature in the works they already know. Formal analysis can be a method of understanding more than just literature in schools. Those patterns and ideas exist everywhere.

Briefly looking over the literacy engagements in this week’s readings, the “Text Coding Symbols” document caught my eye. My CT has made a push for her students to learn how to annotate texts this year, which is similar to this exercise. I had never given it a lot of thought, but students (particularly in 9^th grade) may not have a great concept of how to take notes or make sense out of texts simply using a pen. It’s a form of analysis that we often do not assess, but could be even more valuable than the lessons we actually grade. I think making this process part of the curriculum is an excellent idea that encourages students to begin thinking analytically about texts as they are reading and responding to them.

The “Do” I have selected for this week is an example of a vocabulary exercise I had my students do over my teaching week. After reading their weekly scientific article, the students were asked to select five words they did not recognize and fill out this worksheet. At first, I thought students might take the easy way out and pick words they understood to make things easy on themselves, but to my surprise every one of them followed the directions and demonstrated that they understood their words at the end of about twenty minutes of time to look the words up and get to know them. I have marked out this student’s name, but wanted to show how s/he responded. I think this was a good assignment that demonstrates how formal analysis can be engaging and productive.

Entry 3: Inviting Other Theoretical Perspectives

Bridging English, Chapter 5

Reading Better, Reading Smarter, Chapter 4

Appleman, Multiple Perspectives

“Of Grave Diggers and Kings”

“A Lens of One’s Own”

This week was our review of Critical Synthesis. On this re-read, I noticed that Milner’s approach in the Bridging English text is to individually go over the theories in detail, but the activities often have students exploring multiple theories in fishbowl groups and the like. It seems like this is an attempt to introduce lots of different ideas at once instead of narrowing in on one. This got me thinking that, at the secondary level, the writers we read often advocate introducing many theoretical lenses at once. I have seen this myself in a class observation (during 547). By contrast, Appleman's article begins by mentioning that typically, “a single theoretical vision tends to dominate the teaching of literature until it is replaced by another” (4). Ideally, then, the goal is to expose the existence of multiple theories so that students recognize how there are many different readings and they could develop their own approaches using those as a base. This definitely falls in line with my primary educational philosophy; I want students to become people who think for themselves and do not believe everything at face value, which is admittedly difficult when one wants them to follow class rules at face value.

But what about focusing on one theory at a time? The last two articles, “Of Grave Diggers and Kings” and "A Lens of One's Own" went into detail about the benefits and complications of teaching Marxist and Feminist theory. Although I struggle with it greatly myself, I certainly see the value in the Marxist lens; it is a path to free thought, and allows the reader to develop an understanding of the social construction of context for literature. However, Marx is a very polarizing figure, especially among those without a higher education, and it is very true that we must be careful and make the intent of our lessons very clear, particularly for parents reading planning documents. “A Lens of One’s Own” delved a bit in to how there will always be some resistance from male students regarding feminist readings of texts. I think it is important to understand that a feminist interpretation is one out of many, but some alternative strategies could probably benefit reluctant learners. Teachers tend to select texts like The Yellow Wallpaper or The Awakening to teach the feminist lens, but I think the more indirect lens of applying the perspective on top of a text that is not "inherently" about women's issues actually reveals more of the depth of the theory. Hamlet is a likely choice, with Hamlet's infamous mistreating of the women in the play, but there are countless other texts that show oppression vs. women in subtle or non-subtle ways. 

I found it interesting that our reading from Reading Better, Reading Smarter claimed literary theory to be “a tool to engage reluctant readers” (75). On the surface, this seems to oppose the educational philosophy we have been studying thus far. However, I liked the example this reading and one of the others used to illustrate how critical synthesis can work even at the middle grade level. The suggestion to teach a story that is coming from a different point of view, like “The Three Little Pigs” from the perspective of the wolf, as a pre-reading activity was a good takeaway. Synthesis can in fact be scaffolded in the same manner that other reading strategies are.

For my Do portion, unfortunately, I have nothing to draw on from my current classes, so I am once again thinking of ideas for the future. The one Synthesis lesson I have observed in the past had every student making powerpoint presentations about a single theory, and while I harbor no disdain for this approach, I think the idea of giving students more of a choice in presentation method could get them more invested. As such, I am modifying a To Kill a Mockingbird activity my CT used to fit the study of critical lenses instead. This assignment is based on the ending of Romeo and Juliet and would be assigned after the students have already been exposed to their theories, which would include Feminist, Marxist, Psychoanalytical, and Archetypal theory. 

Critical Perspectives:
Multigenre Small Group Project

Choose one among the following activities for your group’s assigned theoretical lens.

Assignment 1:

Performance Commentary: Have two members of your group play the roles of Romeo and Juliet, while one or two others are critics in your theoretical discipline watching the final scene. The critic(s) should comment on the action as it is happening, noting how the scene is read using your lens. If you have two commentators, one can “teach” the other or the two can have a conversation.

You need to have a script for your commentary. It can be read during the performance. This script will be turned in for a grade. Please note that you do not need to use Shakespearean language in your performance.

Assignment 2:

Advertisement/Propaganda: Design a poster or magazine/online advertisement either promoting or criticizing the play’s final scene using your group’s theoretical lens. You may use any visuals you like, but the poster must have a text slogan (Such as: Nike—Just Do It). Your group must present the poster to the class, explain why you chose the images and slogan you did. What was the purpose of your ad? Who is it targeted at?  Why does your theoretical lens apply?

Your ad will be turned in for a grade, as well as a written version of your campaign pitch for the presentation.

Assignment 3:

Song/Poem: Your group must write a song or poem about the final scene, and the song must talk about the piece must talk about the scene using a critical lens. You may write an original song or base your song off of another one, but the lyrics need to be original and relevant to the text. Be specific in your writing: the song must have direct references to the scene, telling what happened in it.

For your performance, you can either do a dramatic reading or sing the song. If anyone in your group is musically inclined, they may bring an instrument and add music, but this is not necessary. Prospective rappers may also have a backing beat, but the music sample must be turned in beforehand so I can check it beforehand so there aren’t any surprises. The lyrics of your song will be turned in for a grade. 

Entry 2: Reader Response

Readings: 

Louise Rosenblatt, “The Challenge of Literature”

“The Lens of Reader Response”

Mary Styslinger & Emily Eberlin, “Where We Are: Responsive Reading Using Edmodo”

Bridging English, Chapter 5 Review
Susan Henneberg, "Dimensions of Failure in Reader Response"
Maureen McLaughlin, "Critical Literacy as Comprehension"

Fundamentally, Rosenblatt argues we, as ELA teachers, are teaching the human experience. In this light, the canon still 'matters' because “Works of the past […] engender a major psychological question: What are the basic human traits that persist despite social and cultural changes?” (13). While not a lot of my graduate English studies' subjects are inherently transferable to secondary education, one idea that has come up a few times is that both the reader and text are active in their own ways during the reading process. As Rosenblatt puts it, literature is a “living context” (24). Readers have individual proficiency and experiences that shape the literature they can grow from reading; while the process is on the surface a temporary experience, it is actually quite persistent as what is experienced (ideally) stays with the reader. Essentially, the power of literature only comes in part from the texts themselves; students have the power to grow and we as teachers direct their employment of that power. This, in the context of last week's readings, explains why we can teach lessons on more intuitive texts and still have students learn from them. On that subject, McLaughlin's article details several suggestions on how to have students exploring the texts they currently comprehend critically. I think it is always important to remember we can draw on the resources we currently have; students can critically approach any text, not only the classics.

One thing these readings made me think about was this recent 'cult of relatability' I have noticed as a guy attending graduate studies almost a decade after he should have been. There is this idea that a text being 'relatable' inherently gives it value. At first, this seems to be an idea in line with reader-response theory, and may well have been influenced by reader-response exercises in secondary school, but the danger lies in if ones considers 'relatable texts' in a binary, meaning texts that are not 'relatable' have NO value. Are we overdoing it with RR? Are kids only taking their personal responses into account? "The Lens of Reader Response" shared similar concerns, proposing, “I was guilty of imposing a theoretical framework with no room for deviation” (31). The writer's proposed solution to eliminating the binary is to teach students what they are doing when responding to texts. The meaning of a reading comes from the text meeting the individual in RR theory, but RR is only one critical lens to apply to literature. This is why RR is an excellent springboard that should be used with essentially all literature taught, but we should aim to eventually teach critical synthesis; reading is simply not an entirely egocentric exercise.

With regard to Styslinger's and Eberlin's article, the title immediately made me pay attention, as Edmodo has been used frequently in the classes I have observed and seems like a very important tool for students in the current classroom. Maybe that will not be true forever, but it’s certainly here now. The article gives a lot of food for thought, especially in its last paragraph, asking the big questions facing us right now. Particularly, I find myself wondering about the query, “what does plagiarism mean to a student who has always been able to find the answer to a question on the internet?” (28). This is a problem we cannot solve in the existing model of ELA we teach in our classrooms. It’s only going to change more as products like Google Glass go mainstream and make the internet even more easily accessible. This idea of always being connected changes reader response too; students will be able to know data at any time and potentially understand texts more rapidly, which means we have to focus more than ever on how they make meaning of the things they read so they find purpose in what they are doing in our classes.

One of my peers mentioned on our GroupMe that she noticed CP students need far more RR than she expected before moving on to formal analysis. The 15 minute plans I thought up in 547 may not be valid depending on the students. During my first rotation's teaching week, which is coming up very quickly, I will likely be trying to make the most of time and merge Response with Analysis. This class is behind, especially on their writing levels, so they need more scaffolding than I anticipated during the reading. Henneberg's article provided some insight in to what techniques I might need to employ in response to the failure of one of my lessons. My CT has provided an invaluable resource in an audiobook recording of our novel, which has some amusing direction choices that the students are appreciating so far, and its chapters are also very short and at a low reading level. From this point, using Henneberg's advice, I need to keep an eye on a couple of students who are known troublemakers in case they need to be isolated, but I also need to keep the conversations we have on track from the very beginning in order to maintain classroom management.

The students need engagement with the text before we move on to Formal Analysis, so I will need to focus on making sure those things happen in that order. This is nothing new, but now that I have a better idea of how a classroom flows, the challenge in making it happen is more obvious. At first, I plan to stick very closely to my CT's lesson structures to try and gauge my students better from the front of the room. The review of Bridging English was helpful in this regard, as I was able to list several methods that I might put to use the week after next in order to keep the students engaged in their reading.

This set of questions is an artifact from my third week of Internship A. The questions themselves are practice for the 9th grade EOC exams, in response to the class's Article of the Week on the recent Louisiana floods. At first the inclusion of this artifact may seem off topic, but the important thing is that going over the questions got the students thinking about our recent flood experience here in Columbia. It opened up into a Personal Trigger exercise very naturally, and the class had a very welcome discussion after completing the questions. This is one of those teachable moments my CT was able to anticipate and adapt to very quickly, and an important aspect of reader response. The students were engaged for the remainder of the class period.

Entry 1: Transacting with Literature

Readings:
Mike Roberts, "Teaching Young Adult Literature"
Mary Rice, "Using Graphic Texts in Secondary Classrooms: A Tale of Endurance"
Sarah Herz, "Directing Vs. Exploring"
"How Do I Judge the Complexity of a Text?"

While the title of this section is 'Transacting Literature,' the theme I truly focused on during these readings was 'Selecting.' The article on judging complexity exposes the ideas we need to consider when evaluating what to provide for students, and this is something that is always in flux depending on their reading levels. Herz uses Rosenblatt's support to establish the argument that text selection is based on the "tools" available to students as well. Rice makes a strong case for the inclusion of graphic novels as well, but the overall philosophy to take away is that we need to be open to different kinds of texts regardless of their form. After being among ninth graders for a couple of weeks, I can say without hesitation that many of them would benefit greatly from slowly transitioning toward more challenging canon texts; many of them struggle to simply identify important themes in the texts they read, and it only makes sense to get them started with more currently relevant readings they can readily adjust to.

I think Mike Roberts raises the best point of our readings when he states that YA Lit has "improved substantially, and the genres and topics addressed blossomed exponentially" (101). When I was in grade school, smaller-form novels without a lot of substance were all the rage in children's literature, but today we have a very valuable resource available in the young adult fiction market. Why should students have to be implicitly told only the works of the canon have literary value when there are obvious examples to the contrary all around them? Perhaps my favorite aspect of the market is that there is so much variety. Even within one umbrella genre like dystopian fiction, we have solid books about romance, programmers, young kids, older kids, non-humans, and more. The only reason to keep our students fixed on a single text instead of allowing them their choice among many is to make our assignments easier to plan. This is why we need to develop methods that can be generalized to account for a variety of text selection. I selected my example for this week based on this principle.

Do:
These readings coincided with my CT's Research Paper unit, meaning my students have not been transacting with anything but informational texts, which puts me in the position of needing to think toward the future. After observing a class for a few weeks and seeing how classes tend to go, the problem of fitting in time for YA Lit on the side has been eating at me. I want to foster an environment where students become readers because they want to be readers, and like it or not this does mean sacrificing some extra time spent on more pointed assignments in class.

I was a big fan of the Book Club circle selection process we used in our 786 class meeting. Thinking about how to group the students for the initial book selection circles, I remembered an assignment my CT had given her students to both allow them to practice research methods and get to know them better. This artifact is a mock-up of a version I might try with a future class. This worksheet would be an exit slip, most likely submitted via Edmodo. The purpose of this assignment is to gather information about my students that can lead to text selection (including selection of songs during poetry studies). Their interests, their likely reading levels, and their competence levels with very basic research methods. It would be distributed digitally over Edmodo.

Mr. Hall English I CP                             Researching Ourselves                                                

Follow the directions for each question carefully. You must use internet searches to complete each question. Submit your responses to your Edmodo backpack. All images attached must be things you could show your grandmother. If they aren’t, I can quite easily show them to the principal. :)

1.      What is one of your favorite movies? Name it and search the internet to fill in the indicated information.

Movie:                                                                             Director’s Name:
Year of Release:                                                                           Rottentomatoes Score:

2.      What is your favorite current television show? Why do you like it? Search the internet for a picture of your favorite character from the show and link to the image below.

Show:
Why do you like it?


Image link:

3. What is one of your favorite musical artists? (bands or solo artists) Search the internet to find the artist’s primary genre of music, then list some of the other major artists in that genre.
Band/Artist:                                                                                   Genre:
Who are some other artists in the genre that you discovered?


4. Think back on all the books you read during middle school and at home. What were some that you liked reading? Use the internet to find their authors and explain one thing you liked about each of them.
Book 1:                               Author:                               I liked…
Book 2:                               Author:                               I liked…
Book 3:                               Author:                               I liked…

5. What would you say is one of your hobbies or main interests? Perhaps something cool you did over the summer? Look up the hobby or interest on the internet and locate three websites that look like official resources that have information about them. Why do the websites seem official to you?

Hobby/interest:

Website 1:
This looks official because…

Website 2:
This looks official because…

Website 3:
This looks official because…

Say / Do Overview of Artifacts

Say/Do Entry #	Do	Requirement fulfilled.
1	Research Ourselves Exit Slip	Want to do
2	Article Reading Questions Personal Response Discussion	Something we did
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

Responses:

Week:	I responded to...
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

Remaining requirements:

Lesson Plan designed and related to readings for this week (x2)

Classroom support material connected to readings that shows what I want to do in the future (x2)

Artifact from internship A that shows something I did connected to readings

Artifact from internship A that shows how adolescents read text and make meaning using media (Can be reused from above)

Artifact from internship A that shows how adolescents compose text and make meaning using media (Can be reused from above)