Week 4, Blog Post 4 Adding more voices to the reading pedagogy conversation. Takeaways for Pernille Ripp’s “Teacher Reading Identity and How It Matters” and “Developing Student Reading Identity by Making Reading a Personal Journey” in Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child:
In short, students need “choice, time, access to books, and a supportive environment” (Ripp 97) for reading success. Running like a current through Ripp’s chapters is the understanding that we may not see the transformation our students make to become readers, but we’re helping our students make progress toward that transformation. I think this will be one of my bigger struggles, watching my students seem to stay immune to my enthusiasm about reading and resistant to their own development as readers without becoming too discouraged myself. But in Ripp’s words, we can only hope we’re making progress with our students as readers if we “purposefully create the conditions for this shift in [reader] identity” (89). Like Kittle and Buehler, she offers suggestions on how to create those conditions rooted in her own experience as a teacher. “Consequently, on that day, four years into teaching, I realized that merely having some books and time to read them was not enough…” Pernille RippI can’t say I agree with Ripp as frequently or enthusiastically as I did with Buehler and Kittle because I’m concerned that some of her ideas aren’t as beneficial in the bigger academic picture. Yes, student choice is important. I’ve seen that for myself in addition to reading it in many respected texts. I can also get behind letting students abandon books. But I think student accountability is also important. Written-down personal accountability, sometimes in the form of reading logs, should have a place in addition to the public goals Ripp promotes. I suppose it depends on the class as to what exactly is the best fit, but Kittle’s argument in favor of logs with weekly goals (set to the student’s pace- Kittle explains how students log page numbers according their reading pace for each book and how this method of determining students’ reading investment is usually accurate) is more aware of students’ future needs as potential college students and adult readers. Students need to read consistently and rigorously to develop reading habits that will continue to serve them beyond high school. Kittle’s suggestion for two hours of reading each week is, I believe, more likely to encourage those consistent reading habits than Ripp’s one big goal. Consequently, I’m more inclined to agree with Kittle than Ripp on reading accountability. However, returning to student choice, Buehler, Kittle, and Ripp all agree that choice is important. All three also recognize the importance of teachers matching books to students, although Ripp gives less focus to these teacher-student-book relationships. Considering my own personality and my experiences teaching and tutoring, I think I’ll focus heavily on those relationships. In particular, Ripp has given me two new things to think about in my developing YA pedagogy: audiobooks and book abandonment. Personally, I very rarely abandon books. But I get what Ripp is saying when she explains that book abandonment is empowering to student readers and valuable for encouraging the reading habits found in reading adults. Also, a hesitant reader is going to be even more hesitant to read a book they aren’t enjoying. It’s better that they trade the “wrong” book for one that’s going to give them a positive reading experience because those positive reading experiences are what make life-long readers. As for audiobooks, they’re a valuable tool that somehow managed to slip past my radar. A friend of mine in high school would listen to the audiobook version of a text while they read the physical book along with it to understand the books assigned in our AP Literature class. I’m not sure how I forgot about that until now. I guess that’s part of why I’m so glad books like Passionate Readers exist. I’m not only getting new ideas, I’m also remembering old ideas that I already know work. And if you wanted another voice on twitterchats and/or a cute anecdote:
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Directions: create a scrapbook for a character in the book you read. Book: Wolf by Wolf I did the scrapbook activity from Diana Mitchell's Fifty Alternatives to the Book Report and then kind of modified it according to both the book's needs and my own teacher-ish expectations. Opposed to an entire scrapbook, I did a single page combining a central component of the book (Yael's tattoo) and the scrapbooking aspect (modified to lean more towards the notes Yael carries to reflect both what she would have and the larger story. I included the push pin she carries and Adele's victor medal as well). The superimposed words are her words as she finally kills "Hitler." They're also the words that haunt her because her identity haunts her, so I wanted that to overwhelm the picture. I always love an excuse to draw a little and design things. One of my high school teachers had us make an illustration that captured how we experienced the story (with a 500 word write up to explain our reasoning/thought process. It was one option of many and they each had writing components- she knew we would all choose the one that didn't require any writing if there was one). I spent way too much time on those projects, but I loved them. I think that idea merged with the scrapbooking one in this little project. I like this as something for my students because you could draw or clip/print pictures. You have to engage with both a single character and the larger plot in a way that's fun and accessible for almost all students. Week 3, unnumbered blog post Week 3, Blog Post 3 Putting YA literature pedagogy in conversation with Kittle. I’ll start with my biggest takeaways again, this week from Penny Kittle’s “Understanding Readers and Reading,” “Building Stamina and Fluency,” and “Opening Doors into Reading” in Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina, and Passion in Adolescent Readers.
Buehler’s and Kittle’s beliefs about being teachers of readers are largely harmonious. The passages for this week and last interact for me as an introduction to the idea of YA lit (Buehler) and then how to teach reading (Kittle) in such a way that Buehler gives the larger ideas and material that Kittle then situates inside a more tangible teaching methodology. They certainly complement each other, and I enthusiastically agree with much of what both teachers have to say. When Kittle says it’s important for students to take pleasure in reading, it doesn’t mean avoiding challenging or potentially “dry” texts. It means letting students read what they want to read in addition to those texts. Their pleasure reading will often be a means of building the stamina to read these more difficult texts. As Kittle excellently explains it, students need “sustained engagement with stories” (21) to be better readers. We must encourage students’ confidence that they can be better readers. This is about teacher-student relationships and students’ relationships with books. We must trust students to trust us and to more importantly trust themselves. This looks like many things inside and outside of the classroom, but I believe Kittle suggests that the most important one is setting goals. The goals should be attainable (Kittle suggests setting reading paces to determine how many pages two hours of reading looks like and setting that as a weekly goal) and student-driven. Just as we have to trust students when they write and give them choice with writing (also from Kittle), we have to trust students to read and making reading choices. We as teachers must support students and therefore we must support students’ choices. And just like with writing, some of this support looks like conferences. Reading conferences! A novel thought (pun intended), but one I can get behind. Reading conferences support student-teacher relationships, give teachers the opportunity to match students with books (Buehler), the opportunity to check in on reading goals and progress, and the chance to catch “fake-reading” (where the student isn’t actually reading the book, just Sparknotes-ing it or maybe not even that). With reading conferences, we create a space where we can check and celebrate engagement with books to encourage our students as readers inside and outside of the classroom- and isn’t that one of our biggest goals as English teachers? “Developing reading stamina by cultivating an individual reading habit requires relationships with students and systems that support, encourage, and challenge readers; it also requires will.” Penny Kittle I enjoyed Kittle’s writing on writing and find myself also enjoying what she has to say about reading, which is probably obvious by my slightly-too-lengthy list of takeaways. If I was better at brevity (it’s a work in progress), I would have limited myself just to this excerpt from page 52:
Consider the reading we need to balance during a yearlong English class: 1.We need to study literature (whole texts). 2.We need to read short mentor texts (in all genres) to understand the writer’s craft and create a vision for what we ourselves will write. 3.We need to develop an independent reading life. This is also a reminder of just how interdependent reading and writing are to each other. With Grant Snider's A Reader's Manifesto as both inspiration and model, my own reader's manifesto: This was drawn with my future classroom in mind, but above all, it's true to who I am as a reader.
Week 3, unnumbered blog post reflecting on twitterchat as teaching tool #uga_yalitWeek Two, unnumbered blog post Week 2, Blog Post 2 Developing a YA pedagogy. First, the big takeaways from Jennifer Buehler’s “Reading with Passion and Purpose” and “Young Adult Literature and Text Complexity” in her book Teaching Reading with YA Literature: Complex Texts, Complex Lives:
Reading Buehler’s chapters, I was mentally cheering: yes! That’s it! That’s what I was thinking/feeling right there in real, published words. I heartily agree with each of the “takeaways” I’ve summarized above. I want to do it all! I think one thing that I’ll need to keep reminding myself of is that I was a reader. I devoured books like no one’s business and if it was assigned for class, no matter what it was, I read it all. Most of my friends did not read those books, (We usually ended up with pretty similar grades, too. I’ll admit, that frustrated me to no end.) which may mean most of my students would not read those books. But, as an administrator conceded to Buehler, at least everyone was thinking about the books even if they weren’t reading them. What conversations or books are so important that it’s enough that they take place in this partial way, and which conversations can be made with books that are more likely to be read? The answer, of course, is not all classics nor all YA. I was fortunate in that my own high school English teachers also felt this way. My vision of my own classroom also searches for the balance between classics and YA, searching for each book as it best takes part in the dialogue I’m trying to make. Sometimes it will be a classic that best says what I think needs saying. Sometimes it will be YA. It will always be what I think my students need most. That’s where I am in developing my YA pedagogy right now. If teens "can be in a place where they feel safe, they feel like they can have fun, but at the same time they're being called to thoughtfulness, and they're being convinced that intellectualism, thinking with some depth, has quality to it, then it's magical what can happen." (John Green in an interview with Jennifer Buehler)I’m not sure exactly where or how middle grades books have a place in my developing YA pedagogy, but I think that has to do more with my uncertainty about what a middle grades book is rather than the books themselves. It has something to do with the language (its readability, if you will) and something to do with the complexity of the characters and plot. But “something” doesn’t go very far defining an idea. Granted, I’ve only read two of these “middle grades” books and am reading a third right now- that’s not very much exposure. And while reading and watching book reviews have exposed me to some more books, I’m hearing some of the same words I found in my own initial response- the word “unfulfilling” in particular. And the books that my peers and I have gotten excited about, well, we’re excited about they could have a space in in not just middle school classrooms, but those of high school, too. Oops. It feels as though there’s a shared difficulty in perceiving a good middle grades book as exactly that, a good middle grades book, and not as a mislabeled YA book. But what do these thoughts about middle grades literature look like in light of Buehler? I think that more clearly defining YA literature helps to define middle grades literature. YA literature is about growing up, is situated in an adolescent perspective with an adolescent voice, and is relevant to its adolescent audience. Therefore, it stands to reason that middle grades literature is situated in a younger perspective with a more accessible voice. Middle grades books, like YA books, can address mature and difficult ideas. I don’t think that I’ll teach middle grade literature, but it will certainly be available in my classroom. Middle grades literature will sit alongside YA literature on my high school classroom bookshelves. Why YA literature?YA literature helps us meet students where they are.
YA literature honors and validates students’ process of self-discovery. YA literature can be both academically and emotionally engaging. YA literature can contribute to both academic and personal growth. A Season of StarsNumber the stars: Full dark, no stars. The dark is rising. Everything arises, everything falls away- different seasons. Hope for the city? Stargirl. Week Two, unnumbered blog post
“You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book!” – Dr. Seuss6/6/2018 Week 1, Blog Post 1
How do you define the terms "literacy" and "adolescent literature?” I’ve had a semester to think about the possibilities of “literacy.” Literacy is the ability to read and write, but it’s also being fluent in just about anything. As a university student and teacher-in-training, I’d like to think I’m fluent/literate in school. As a life-long resident of the South, I’d also like to think I’m literate in good Southern manners. I haven’t given the same amount of thought to adolescent literature. Does adolescent literature include just those books written for adolescents? Or is it broader? Do all books written for adolescents actually fit within “adolescent literature?” I imagine my understanding of adolescent literature will develop during this summer of YA books. For the moment, however, I’ll say that adolescent literature can be defined as those books which address themes prevalent to middle- and high-schoolers and typically have main characters around the same age as that target audience. The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner and All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely (see my thoughts on these books here) do a really nice job of contextualizing these positions. The boys in All American Boys become literate in racial tension. Dill and Lydia of The Serpent King become literate in mental illness. These are topics that affect adolescents, their proximity to middle- and high-school age students further demonstrated by the protagonists’ adolescence. I think that for a teacher, these books (these pieces of adolescent literature!) are an opportunity to help students become literate in both the traditional sense and in terms of fluencies. |
AuthorI'm a high school English teacher looking to share with students, parents, and peers some of what I'm learning in the classroom as a teacher. Archives
October 2018
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