[Rachel] www.teachingliterature.org

Hello one and all,

Check out this website! It's really pretty cool because it approaches literature teaching issues from many fronts. My top 3 take-aways were:

1. From the teacher's point of view: Employing facilitative techniques

This is something for teachers to think about when preparing for a literature lesson and basically suggests that as we adopt the role of a discussion facilitator, we should practice conversational techniques that will encourage students to expand on or clarify their ideas, repeating what was said to check interpretations, involving others in the conversation, bouncing questions asked back to the asker, summarizing the direction or flow of the conversation, using nonverbal cues to signal engagement or involvement, modeling or scaffolding certain ways of thinking, or eliciting further thoughts from participants.

    2.  Directing Students' objectives when reading assigned text: A Reading/Discussion form

The idea of giving out a Reading/Discussion form to students to bring home seems to me an ingenius one. Depending on what we want our students to focus on in the next discussion or class assignment, we can adjust this 'checklist' of sorts for the students to use to guide their attention in specific areas of the text as they read it on their own. They jot down their questions or issues they may have with the text within the form; this prepares them for a fruitful classroom discussion.

   3.  Collaborative activity within/out the classroom: Mini Book Club Discussions

This is where students form little book clubs of 3-5 members, each assigned a clear role i.e., Discussion Director, Cool Quote Finder, Multiple Perspective Taker etc. to to allow free-flowing, uninhibited conversation about the literature. Consequently, each book club will be asessed by the teacher and self-assessed by each member based on each role. Thus, this motivates the fulfilment of each role responsibly from the very beginning.


Anecdotes and sample resources included.  Just some up/down scrolling to do. Enjoy!

http://www.teachingliterature.org/teachingliterature/chapter5/activities.htm