Beach: Graphic Novels

I am a convert to graphic novels. I was only introduced to them this semester in ENGL 420. I've read at least one a week since then. I love them. I find them challenging and interesting; graphic novels cause me to think symbolically and think visually. I've actually been surprised with how difficult graphic novels are to understand because of how much inferences I have to make. However, I find them visually stunning and rewarding. I am excited to read Hinds' The Odyssey--I just finished Beowulf. I think graphic novels are an exciting and challenging medium to tell stories. I'm excited to use them in my classroom.

Incorporating Literary Lenses

One of the most interesting things I’ve done as a college student is learn and analyze books, movies, and life through theoretical lenses. I don’t know why we wait until college to teach students these theories. I think that high school students should being learning them. I think one way of implement these theoretical approaches it to ground students together (3 or 4 students), assign them a poem or short story, and give them a lens to interpret it through—just like we did in class on Wednesday. Then, each group can explain their interpretation of the text to the class so everyone can see how each lens yields a unique interpretation. Also, instead of simple book reports, I can have my students view at their home reading through a critical lens. Students can pick the book and the theory. I think critical theory can make the English class more relevant.

Beach ch. 12 (132-8)

Reading poetry has always been difficult for me. It wasn’t until recently that I actually found reading poetry enjoyable. Beach gives three suggestions that I think would really help get students invested in poetry: (1) have students bring in their own poems and/or find poems online that they enjoy; (2) construe the definition of poetry by including concrete poems and song lyrics; and (3) pair poems with stories or novels instead of teaching a poetry unit. I also like the idea that poetry should be performed, not just read. Students should select a poem and perform it for the class. I also thing that in order to understand poetry, students need to be taught to respond to key words and phrases, visualize the scene, use their senses, identify with the speaker, and ask questions while they’re reading.

Beach ch 4 & 9

In high school, I red Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, and The Lord of the Flies. As I’m not approaching these classics from a teacher’s perspective, I view them a little differently. I’m excited yet reluctant to teach them. I’m excited to teach them because they are timeless works that address universal human experiences and themes. However, they’re old; they’re full of archaic syntax and complicated structures that turn modern students off to them. When I say I read them in high school, I really mean I sat in discussions in which others students—certainly not I—read them. I didn’t like them when I was younger because they had little appeal to me. That, then, begs the question: how can I make the canonical literate accessible and enjoyable for my students? I think the easiest answer is teaching the themes, not just the books. The books are simply vehicles to explore universal themes of the human experience. I can ask essential questions—any open-ended questions that would lead to fruitful conversations—about the books. I can also make my discussions on literature more interesting by using theoretical lenses to augment ideas and conversations. For example I can have my students analyze literature through a reader-response perspective, the archetypal perspective, a Marxist perspective, a deconstruction perspective, a gender perspective, or a postcolonial perspective.

"Adolescents and Text; Scaffolding the English Canon With Linked Text Sets"

To me, this article was all about integrating relevant modern and digital texts into the class to augment and support classic literature in the English classroom. Because of today’s technology, students now may find classic literate as dull, boring, and irreverent. However, if teachers provide different multi medias and revenant essential questions, students will be interested and engaged with classic literature. I don’t want to teach English because I love books—because I do—I want to teach English because I want to engage my students with the analytical tools they need to think critically about their lives. It seems only natural, then, to integrate Linked Text Sets into the classroom. I want the reading skills I teach my students to transfer over to their everyday lives, which are now heavily influenced by technology. I’m going to bring music, film, photography, art, websites, and visual representations into my classroom. As much as I love literature, I’m more interested in understanding the human experience—and LTS are now part of the human experience.

Beach ch 13

Teaching literature not only teaches students how to engage in difficult text, which will prove an invaluable skill as adults, but it teaches students how to analyze the world and engage in critical discussion. So we should assess whether or not students can engage and discusses ideas, not just test whether or not they know who Pip is. There are three types of knowledge: declarative (what is it?); functional/procedural (how do I do it?); and generative/conditional (where can I use this again?). We should balance assessment between the three. Other than multipliable choice “objective” tests, students can demonstrate their knowledge through journals or blog responses, written essays, multigenre projects, presentations, discussions, art projects, multimedia essays, portfolios, or personal narratives (just to name a few).

Beers, "When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do"

All throughout high school I was a struggling reader. I absolutely hated reading, especially aloud. I had—and still have—trouble decoding (sounding out) text. The more I read, however, the better I became at reading—but not necessarily decoding. To this day, when I come across an unfamiliar word, I can’t sound it out. So I go to an online dictionary where I can hear a pronunciation of the word, listen to it about ten times, say it about twenty, and hope it sticks. I see words chunks that I’ve memorized, not individual letters that comprise a word. But it’s taken me years of practice until I became a proficient reader. I didn’t really start reading until I was 21, after all.
Beers offers what good readers do:

• They recognize that reading is done for a purpose, to get meaning, and that this involves the reader actively participating.
• They use a variety of comprehension strategies such as predicting, summarizing, questioning and visualizing the text.
• They make inferences about the text.
• They use prior knowledge about their lives and their world to inform their understanding of a text.
• They monitor their understanding of a text, identify what is challenging, and have strategies to improve their understanding.
• They evaluate their enjoyment of a text and why it did or did not appeal to them.
• They know many vocabulary words and how to use the context, word parts, and roots to help understand new words.
• They recognize most words automatically, read fluently, vary their reading rate, and “hear” the text as they read.

I was never able to engage in these reading strategies until I developed that latter skill: recognizing words automatically. I hope that as a teacher, I hope I can recognize why my students are having difficulty reading as opposed to just saying, “That kid can’t read.” I think if someone helped me realized that I had trouble decoding words before I graduated high school, I think I would have become a reader long ago.