Former Marine, Current Student, Future Teacher, but always a Dad!

Here is another excerpt from the Anneburg Online Workshop.

Over the last several decades, reader-response techniques have become firmly established in American classrooms. Language arts teachers at all levels now widely accept central tenets of the theory, particularly the notion that learning is a constructive and dynamic process in which students extract meaning from texts through experiencing, hypothesizing, exploring, and synthesizing. Most importantly, teaching reader response encourages students to be aware of what they bring to texts as readers; it helps them to recognize the specificity of their own cultural backgrounds and to work to understand the cultural background of others.

Using reader response in the classroom can have a profound impact on how students view texts and how they see their role as readers. Rather than relying on a teacher or critic to give them a single, standard interpretation of a text, students learn to construct their own meaning by connecting the textual material to issues in their lives and describing what they experience as they read. Because there is no one “right” answer or “correct” interpretation, the diverse responses of individual readers are key to discovering the variety of possible meanings a poem, story, essay, or other text can evoke.

Students in reader-response classrooms become active learners. Because their personal responses are valued, they begin to see themselves as having both the authority and the responsibility to make judgments about what they read. (This process is evident in the video programs, when students are asked to choose a line of poetry and explain why it is important to them.) The responses of fellow students also play a pivotal role: Through interaction with their peers, students move beyond their initial individual reaction to take into account a multiplicity of ideas and interpretations, thus broadening their perspective.

Incorporating reader response in the classroom
As increasing numbers of elementary, middle, and secondary school language arts teachers have come to accept reader-response theory over the last 25 years, the instructional techniques that support it have become more common in classrooms: Literature circles, journal writing, and peer writing groups all grew out of the reader-response movement. These teaching strategies value student-initiated analysis over teacher-led instruction, promote open-ended discussion, and encourage students to explore their own thinking and trust their own response.

Growing up I was a veracious reader. I would read everything I could get my hands on. I might become disinterested soon after starting to read something but I would just move on to the next thing to read. Reading is not all that I did. I played sports, talked on the phone with girls, or hung out with friends but all the other time I had was spent reading. I would wake up in the morning and grab a book, before school sitting at the kitchen table I would read the newspaper back to front, and before I went to bed I would read until my eyes……just………….couldn’t………………………..stay………………………….. open ………………………………….. anymore. I loved to read and I was a horrible student, especially in English. (Brakes squaking) Wait a minute you are saying you were a porr student? That’s not the way its supposed to work. What was wrong with your school, you ask? Well i wish I could tell you that it was because they made me read the Great Gatsby and then gave me tests on it instead of putting me in a literature circle but that wouldn’t be true. I was just apathetic about my education and there wasn’t really a method that was going to get me to buy into doing homework or studying. My point is I loved to read, so I read and this developed my ability, my knowledge, and in the long run my achievement but most students are not me. They have no interest in reading and cannot see the importance of it to their long run success. They are like the kid who wants to play in the NBA but hates to practice or even play pickup games. They good players are the gym rats and the achieving student at least needs to sharpen his reading skills if not become a book rat.

As you read the above excerpt, did it makes sense to  you? It makes perfect sense to me. The idea of getting students to use tools such as reading circles allows te reluctant reader to approach a text from there own point of view but then shows them other points of view or gives them a window into other perspectives of the story. A student then is able to approach his next time reading with a different way of looking at the text along with his initial reaction. Take a student thatis reading 10 pages about the civil war from their history text for homework. The reluctant reader might just read it and look for facts to memorize but the same student who has been engaged in a language arts class that uses reader response techniques might approach this homework from an entirely different course in a different way. They might look at the major events as important but also think about what this meant for the townspeople living close to a battle or the confederate soldier who was captured, or the family of the union soldier who was killed. That same student might start to think of the connections to other parts of the book by making predictions of the ramifications. By using reader response you are able to get the student to use higher level thinking and teach them to find interest in reading because of their new ability to internalize and reconstruct what the text is telling them. I will use the following example of some of what I am talking about:

An innovative reading program held at the Woodstown Middle School was thrust into the limelight last week as Public Television cameras and boom microphones descended upon sixth-graders inside the cafeteria.

With colorful poster boards and costumed kids taking up the expanse of the room, “Classroom Close-up, NJ,” weaved in and out of the displays, recording the outcome of this six-week project.

The program, brainchild of teachers Gina Donahue and Shelly Ortman, allows students to actively participate in small groups in an effort to teach one another about a shared novel.

“It offers something different than the traditional paper and pencil test,” said Donahue, an 11-year veteran of teaching. “These literature circles give kids the opportunity to work together toward a common understanding of the book.”

The circles were composed mostly of three to four people, and put together students who would best compliment one another’s particular strengths. The final group projects were required to include a display of the book’s key story elements and a skit of some sort.

And not even a fire alarm on the last half-day before a long vacation last Thursday could derail the efforts of the students, leaving teachers reason to be proud.

“I was particularly impressed with the way they refocused (after the fire alarm), they are really involved and it’s great to see,” said Rich Fiolkowski, another sixth-grade teacher at the school.

Donahue added, “At first the whole project was a little overwhelming for them, but they took it piece by piece and I am extremely proud of the outcomes here today.”

As one student conveyed, it was a great chance to break out of the norm of your average school day.

“You get to interact and get so many other opinions,” said student Gabe Woodside. “It’s something different than just listening to the teacher all the time though take nothing away from Mrs. Donahue, she’s a great teacher.”

By offering reading in this way to students they baght into it. Now sixth graders aren’t 10th graders but I am not looking for a 10thgrader to get excited about making a poster board cut out but if i can use a literature circle to get him/her thinking about what the text means and to see other perspectives then I believe it is a good tool. By using this tool I think we can get students to view reading as something they own.

Todays Sunbeam
reading program puts kids in sunlight
by Randall Clark
April 9, 2007

Annenburg Media Online
The Expanding Canon: Teaching Multicultural Literature in High School
Reader Resonse – Theory Overview
By Pat Mora and James Welch