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My Philosophy of Reading
"In order to develop readers, we must encourage and foster the creative
attitudes and activities of engaged readers."
"If literature does not speak to student lives, then
what good is it?"
~Jeffrey Wilhelm
Suzanne Reifschneider
ED 480 Teaching Literature in Schools
Western Michigan University
October 14, 2002
Reading-An ACTIVE Experience
Questioning
Incorporating Reader-Response Theory
The Job of the Teacher
Peers as Teachers
Drama in the Classroom
Using These Guiding Principles In My Classroom
Conclusion
Works Cited
I believe that reading is an interactive activity.
The reader constantly brings things to the text and takes things away.
When I read, I constantly ask myself what is going on, as I create mental
images in my mind and I find ways to relate and interact with the material.
Looking back on my experiences with reading, I often wonder why I find
it to be the most frequent and enjoyable of my activities. The answer
is simple. I have a relationship and take something away from everything
I read. What we read is a reflection of who were are, what we value and
what we enjoy out of life. I realize that I was taught to make these connections
with text by my teachers throughout the years. Now, as I embark on my
long anticipated teaching career, I find myself desiring to teach my students
how to engage in reading as an active activity, while making connections,
reflecting, becoming involved and bringing their prior experiences and
knowledge to the text. My job as a teacher is to make an impression on
my students and get to know about them and their interests in order for
reading to become an experience. Below are my beliefs about reading and
how I plan on incorporating them into my classroom and into my instruction
of selected texts.
Reading-An ACTIVE Experience
"If literature does not speak to student lives, then what good is
it?"
~Jeffrey Wilhelm
Unfortunately, many young readers today find themselves
hating to read and view it as a punishment, rather than a treasure. As
a result, they become disenfranchised and possess this attitude into adulthood.
I view reading as a gift because unlike material things, it can never
be taken away from an individual. These people who view reading negatively
only perpetuate the cycle further. For example, if a student goes through
school loathing reading, they grow up feeling the same way. If they have
children, as hard as they might try to disguise their "true feelings,"
their children might pick up the same animosity.
Jeffery D. Wilhelm, author of You Gotta BE
the Book, finds that many students define reading as only a school-related
activity. Some admitted that they read only to answer the questions at
the end of an assignment. Lousie Rosenblatt creator of Reader-Response
Theory, points out "most classroom reading, questions, and texts
are designed to elicit efferent responses and assume that there
are correct answers to these questions" (Wilhelm 20). In my classroom
I hope to bring everyone's ideas out and discuss their relevance.
Questioning
Wilhelm interviews another disengaged reader who
states, "you can read something good and the teacher ruins it by
asking you questions that you already know, that don't matter, that you
disagree with..." (26). In my classroom I intend on avoided such
situations and attitudes by using Christenbury's questioning circle. Leila
Christenbury, author of Making the Journey-Being and Becoming A Teacher
of English Language Arts, states that questions should be taken out
of three realities of a work: the matter, the personal reality and the
external reality. My goal is to pose questions that incorporate these
three areas (Christenbury 254). In doing so, I will have to bring in the
book meaning and world, the author's intent and the reader's own personal
experiences to engage my readers to become "meaning-makers".
Incorporating Reader-Response Theory
I am a firm supporter of Reader-Response Theory
that was first created by Louise Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt describes the
reading process as a "transaction" between the reader and the
text (19). Essentially, this means that each reader has a different experience
or a meaning than another reader. Many different meanings and interpretations
can be and should be extracted from any given piece of work.
Wilhelm includes ten different dimensions of Reader-Response.
I want my students to be aware of these as they read because an informed
reader is an engaged reader. The ten dimensions are broken into three
thinking categories, evocative, connective and reflective. The evocative
dimensions include: entering the story world, showing interest in the
story, relating to characters and "seeing" the story world.
The connective elements involve: elaborating on the story world and connecting
literature to life. Finally, the reflective dimensions include: considering
significance, recognizing literary conventions, recognizing reading as
a transaction and evaluating and author and the self as reader (46). These
ten dimensions, in a sense, get right to the heart of my reading philosophy.
If one is aware that all these dimensions are possible, becoming engaged
is not as difficult as it first appears to a reluctant reader.
Under the wide umbrella of Reader-Response, two
subcategories of readers emerge. Efferent readers are only concerned with
what they can walk away from a text with. The text is merely looked at
as information on a page. Students who are reading a text just to answer
the questions at the end often take this approach. The opposite approach,
the aesthetic stance, maintains that the reader lives through the work.
I believe that teachers should encourage each reader to have an aesthetic
experience with reading. The following ideas are how I plan to incorporate
this.
The Job of the Teacher
What I am proposing to do involves teachers getting
to know and interact with their students. Applebee (1989) states, "by
putting books that speak to them and fit their abilities into their hands,
we can give them many reasons to read" (37). One must remember that
each student learns things in a different way. Howard Gardner's Eight
Intelligences illustrates this point nicely. Knowing these things, how
will I as a teacher make reading appeal to all of my students?
First, I promise to get to know my students, their
hobbies and their interests. This is important because I can draw from
them and make references to them through our reading experiences together.
For example, when we are reading The Scarlet Letter, I can ask
my students if they have ever felt like everyone was looking at them.
As a result, the students might have different perspectives on Hester
Prynne and understand and relate to her character more. Another example
could entail the novel Of Mice and Men. To help the students relate
to the minor character, Candy and his dog, I will ask the students if
they have ever had a pet and had to put them down. Making references are
one important way to intertwine the reader and the work.
Peers as Teachers
Besides taking an active interest in my students'
lives, I want to incorporate different strategies to get my students making
these connections on their own, without any prompting from myself. Throughout
my training as an educator, the idea of peers as teachers has become increasingly
important because students can learn just as much from their peers as
they can from my teaching and instruction. Group discussion and activities
are the most convenient way to get students engaged. As I mentioned before,
each student takes something different way from any given work. If students
are allowed to converse and talk to their peers about their derived meanings
and associations, it will be reemphasized that no one answer lies "mysteriously"
in the text.
Another tool I intend to utilize are Literary
Letters. This idea prompts students to write literary letters in response
to a work and share them with their peers. In these letters, students
will write about the unspoken feelings of characters, meanings they interpret
and anything they felt while reading. Unlike group discussions this allows
students to physically write a personal and unique response.
Drama in the Classroom
If a word does not evoke a picture, no meaning has been made.~
Wilhelm (92).
As I have mentioned before, students learn in
a variety of different ways. Some students simply read the words on the
page and see the "imaginary story world" and the characters.
Others struggle with keeping track of the characters and their emotions,
and cannot create this mental world, thus they become disengaged. In striving
to reach these students who rely on visualization, drama serves a very
useful purpose.
If students are visual learners, drama allows
them to physically see scenes acted out. Another benefit of drama is that
it fosters creativity in students to fill in the gaps within any given
text. The actor imagines and acts out the things the author does not include.
Before any student can reach any of the higher dimensions of Reader-Response,
they must first have an idea and visualize what action is taking place.
Theorists and researchers agree that highly engaged readers use drama
in their heads-So why not use it in the classroom. Wilhelm states,
"Readers must first take interest in the action
and setting of the story and begin to participate in a "story world"
before response can occur on other dimensions such as connecting
the story to their lives or reflecting upon the story, its construction,
or its authorship... Such interest and participating are a prerequisite
to engagement on the 'landscape of consciousness' in which the reader
is pulled by the possibilities and potentialities of the story facts into
what those involved in the action know, think or feel, or do not
know, think or feel" (90).
Acting out a story or scene relates back to my incorporation of Reader-Response
in that drama serves as a way of helping students to bring their personal
experiences, schema knowledge, hobbies, interests, desire and questions
into the classroom, thus enabling their peers to learn (91).
Using These Guiding Principles In My Classroom
So far I have mentioned my guiding principles
and beliefs about reading and I have explained what engages a reader and
how I intend to achieve this in my classroom. Now I would like to talk
about what texts students will be studying in my American Literature classes.
Due to the nature of the class, different genres of novels throughout
the last century will be utilized.
"She turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even
touched it with her finer, to assure herself that the infant and the shame
were real. Yes!-These were her realities,--all else had vanished."
~Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (59).
I always start the school year with The Scarlet
Letter because it is a strong story of survival and hardship. Many
students can relate to this because of being freshmen and trying to survive
their first year of high school. My freshmen students often see the importance
of blending in and not being noticed by the seniors. Automatically this
coincides nicely with Reader-Response Theory, in that students know what
the main character is feeling. Although they may not wear a letter "A",
these students feel they are marked just because of the grade they are
in. At the end of the unit, students will have a choice of several different
projects to do at the end of September.
"If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware
of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.
It is an unnecessary insult." (6)
"Like most children, I thought if I could face the worst danger voluntarily,
and triumph, I would forever have power over it." (10)
"They don't really hate us. They don't know us. How can they hate
us? They mostly scared." (192)
~Marguerite Johnson in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings
In order to introduce African-American authors
and female authors to the students, the students will be reading Angelou's
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. While they read, the students
will write literary letters on a weekly basis to their fellow students
and me. I will also provide them with examples of Maya Angelou's poetry
in addition to some background information about the time and setting
of the work.
"Where is it leading us, the process of educated men?"
~Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas
During this unit, I will also stress the importance
of female authors and the major contributions that they have made. I agree
with Liz Whaley and Liz Dodge, authors of Weaving in the Women,
that female authors have been extremely under-represented in the literary
canon. Whaley and Dodge state, "If we do not read and study about
the many peoples and cultures, including the women, of the world, past
and present, how can we ever hope to get along with each other?"
(Christenbury 24). My female students need to see that female authors
do write and my students might shed some light into how they would feel
if their work were regarded as second to that of man's.
"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in
the world.
They got no family. They don't belong no place."
"Trouble with mice is you always kill 'em."
~George from Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (13)
Another major novel that we will tackle this
semester is John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Through incorporating
dramatic elements and interior collages, students will explore the importance
of relationships, responsibility, cruelty and respect, in addition to
the evils of oppression. This works coincides nicely with Angelou's I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Not only will students have another
novel to draw on their experiences, but they will also be to make new
associations. Due to the large amount of controversy surrounding this
novel, any student sensitive to the harsh language may opt to read a different
novel.
Throughout the semester, I will be keeping a teaching
journal, in which I write about these connections, and what worked and
did not work for the students in class. This has proven to be a valuable
instrument in measuring my accomplishments and student's achievements.
Conclusion
In order to have engaged and involved readers,
I plan on using the following principles to guide my instruction: the
use of creative drama, peers as teachers, re-examining my role as a teacher,
Rosenblatt's Reader-Response Theory, using insightful three tiered questioning
and my beliefs of reading as an active and engaging experience.
Works Cited
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Bantam,
1969.
Applebee, A. The Teaching of Literature in Programs With Reputations
for Excellence in English. Albany, New York: Center for the Learning
and Teaching of Literature, 1989.
Christenbury, Leila. Making the Journey-Being and Becoming A Teacher
of English Language Arts. Second Edition. Boyton/Cook Publishers,
1994, 2000.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Washington
Square Press, 1994.
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.
Whaley, Liz and Liz Dodge. Weaving in the Women-Transforming the High
School English Curriculum. Portsmuth, NH: Boyton/Cook Publishers,
1993.
Wilhelm, Jeffrey D. You Gotta BE the Book- Teaching Engaged and Reflective
Reading with Adolescents. New York: Teacher's College Press,
1997.
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1938.
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