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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
Work with students at all levels to help them read novels
Whole Novels is a practical, field-tested guide to implementing a student-centered literature program that promotes critical thinking and literary understanding through the study of novels with middle school students. Rather than using novels simply to teach basic literacy skills and comprehension strategies, Whole Novels approaches literature as art. The book is fully aligned with the Common Core ELA Standards and offers tips for implementing whole novels in various contexts, including suggestions for teachers interested in trying out small steps in their classrooms first.
- Includes a powerful method for teaching literature, writing, and critical thinking to middle school students
- Shows how to use the Whole Novels approach in conjunction with other programs
- Includes video clips of the author using the techniques in her own classroom
This resource will help teachers work with students of varying abilities in reading whole novels.
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Seitenzahl: 577
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Contents
Cover
Jossey-Bass Teacher
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1: Essential Practices
Chapter 1: A Case for Whole Novels for the Whole Class
Let Them Have Stories
A Love Subverted: My Own Story of Reading
Breaking Free of the Chief Thinker Role: Putting Students’ Interests First
Why Study Whole Novels as a Whole Class?
Why We Read the Whole Book First
Why Not Discuss Chapter by Chapter?
Student-Driven Discussions: Making Meaning of the Whole Experience
But Will They Read It?
Letting Go of Preconceptions: Throwing the Boomerang
Helping Students Prepare for Their Future
Whole Novels Have Reach
Parts of the Whole: My Annual Curriculum Map
Chapter 2: Selecting the Right Books: Five Dimensions of Good Chemistry
Choosing for the Whole Class: Thinking in Five Dimensions
Selecting Books That Transcend Personal Taste: Tapping into Developmental Theory
From Identification to Exploration: Selecting Texts That Offer Mirrors and Windows
Understanding Students' Reading Levels: Building Confidence, Increasing Complexity
Creating Connected Reading Experiences: Assembling Common Themes and Structural Elements
Assessing the Strengths of a Novel: Finding a Literary Focus for the Study
A Process for Book Selection Throughout the Year
Chapter 3: Authentic Note Taking: Three Levels of Thinking, Three Levels of Response
Madeleine's Famous Three-Ways-of-Thinking Lesson
Core Messages to Students about Responding to Literature
My Story: Learning to Listen to My Own Thoughts
Strengthening Student Response Habits through Practice
How Do We Categorize Questions?
Combining Three Ways of Thinking: Power Sticky Notes
Helping Students Expand Their Note-Taking Skills
Coming Full Circle: Back to Open Response
Parts of the Whole: A View of Whole Novel Study from Start to Finish
Prologue
Ritual Launch
Reading Time
Whole Group Response Practice
Whole Class Check-ins
Miniprojects
Midway Reading Check
Supplemental Experiences
Creative Writing
Discussions
Writing Project
Chapter 4: Whole Novel Discussions: Everyone Has a Voice
Overview of Discussion Seminars
Setting Up for Discussions
The Seminar: Starting with the Go-Around
The Teacher's Role: Drawing Out Students' Natural Responses
The Tools of Rereading and Finding Evidence
Student-Generated Homework Questions
Opportunities for Introducing Literary Terms
Connecting Real and Fictional Worlds in Discussion
Increasing Student Autonomy in Discussions
Student-Led Discussions
Parts of the Whole: Lessons from Beginning Teachers on Whole Novels
Chapter 5: Making the Writing Connection: Harnessing Students' Drive to Say Something
Developing Claims in Open Discussion
Literary Essays With a Purpose
Essay Structure and Those Annoying Five Paragraphs
Students as Critics of Author's Craft
Literary Essays Using Multiple Sources
Creative Writing in the Whole Novels Program
Part 2: Making Whole Novels Work in Real-World Contexts
Chapter 6: Setting Expectations, Building Accountability: The Launch and Beyond
Launch a Novel With a Ritual
How to Make Sure the Boomerang Returns
Parts of the Whole: My Classroom Setup
Areas of the Room
Indispensible Accessories
How We Use the Space Throughout a Period
Alternative Suggestions for Room Setup
Chapter 7: Developing Students' Critical Reading and Comprehension: Activities We Do along the Way
Helping Students as They Get Into the Novel
Designing Group Miniprojects: Literary Elements as Key Supports
Using Picture Books to Study Plot Structure
Using Supplemental Materials to Build Knowledge Bases and Critical Thinking
The Power of the Side of the Road
Parts of the Whole: Integrating Technology
Online Discussion Platforms
e-Readers
Google Docs Reading Journals
Author Sites
Figment
e-Pals
Novel-Inspired Research
Goodreads
Moviemaking
Book Soundtracks
Chapter 8: Differentiating for Diversity: Whole Novels for All Students
Creating an Atmosphere of Growth
Diagnosing and Intervening with Individual Students
Do You Recognize This Reader?
Special Supports for Struggling Readers
Modifications for Academically Advanced Students
Whole Novels for All
Chapter 9: Analyzing the Results: What We Know and Where We Can Go
The Transferability of Fiction Skills
The Benefits of Fiction in the Real World
The Story the Data Tell
What Becomes of Students of Whole Novels?
It's Not about Me; Anyone Can Learn to Teach Whole Novels
Advocating for Space to Try Whole Novels
Whole Novels for the Whole Class: A Hopeful Future
Appendices
Appendix A: Transcription of Whole Novel Discussion Notes
Appendix B: Spanish Translation of the Parent Letter
Appendix C: Notes Worksheet for Picture Book Study
Appendix D: Directions for Plot Charting Activity
Appendix E: Seeker Opportunity Assignment Choices
Appendix F: Student-Designed “Book Report”
Appendix G: Variations on a Theme Assignment
Appendix H: Hero's Journey Cycle Activity
References
Index
Jossey-Bass Teacher
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Sacks, Ariel.
Whole novels for the whole class : a student-centered approach / Ariel Sacks.
pages cm.—(Jossey-Bass teacher)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-52650-7 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-118-58483-5 (ebk.)
ISBN 978-1-118-58506-1 (ebk.)
1. Fiction—Study and teaching. 2. Youth—Books and reading. 3. Critical thinking. I. Title.
PN3385.S26 2014
809.3′00712—dc23
2013024160
For Madeleine Ray, a true teacher
About the Author
Ariel Sacks has been teaching middle school English in New York City public schools for nine years. She studied progressive pedagogy at Bank Street College of Education and is committed to implementing student-centered methods successfully in public schools. After teaching seventh- and eighth-grade transitional English Language Learners in a bilingual school in East Harlem and serving as eighth-grade English teacher, team leader, and department chair at a middle school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, she currently teaches eighth-grade English and coordinates the grade's advisory program at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School. A coauthor of Teaching 2030: What We Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools—Now and in the Future, Ariel has published articles in Education Week Teacher, Educational Leadership, the New York Daily News, and Bank Street's Occasional Papers Series, and has presented on innovative teaching methods and education policy issues at conferences across the country. She writes regularly about teaching practice and educational issues on her CTQ-featured blog, On the Shoulders of Giants.
The illustrations at the start of each chapter were drawn by Renata Robinson-Glenn, who teaches middle school social studies at the Young Women's Leadership Academy of Queens, New York. She and Ariel both studied middle school education at Bank Street College, where Madeleine Ray was their advisor. Renata first worked with Ariel as a student teacher, leading a whole novel study, and then began teaching social studies at the same school. Renata and Ariel worked together on the same grade team for four years and collaborated in their teaching of literacy, critical thinking, and social skills to their students. When the opportunity to create illustrations for this book arose, Renata brought together her passions for art and student-centered teaching practice to create rich visual representations of concepts from the whole novels method.
Acknowledgments
Years ago, I named my blog “On the Shoulders of Giants.” Though it may not be the most original name, I could not think of a better one, because I truly believe that any success I have as a teacher and writer is standing on the shoulders of giants. Here I acknowledge some of the giants who helped me write this book.
Madeleine Ray, for sharing your genius, for your incredible persistence, and for your mentorship in helping me become a teacher who takes risks and stands by principles; Kate Gagnon, who saw the potential in this book, took a chance on me, and offered thoughtful support along the way; Robin Lloyd, Tracy Gallagher, and everyone else at Jossey-Bass who helped me through this process and made this book look great and real well; John Norton, for being my writing mentor and encouraging me (and so many others) to find my voice as a teacher writer; Barnett Berry and Jon Snyder, for believing I had important things to say and helping me grow into a teacher leader; Dan Rubenstein, LaNolia Omowanile, Penny Marzulli, and Craig Cetrulo at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School, for providing me a wonderful, flexible educational environment to continue developing and sharing the methods in this book; Marcia Stiman-Lavian, Daniel Brink-Washington, and Yusuf Ali, the wonderful learning specialists who have cotaught with me and contributed over the past several years to the development of whole novels methods; the families of my students at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School, for supporting me on this project; Nancy Toes Tangel, for your thought partnership, your belief and innovations in the whole novels approach; Anthony Rebora, for helping me first get the idea out there in an article in Education Week Teacher; Renata Robinson-Glenn, for being an amazing teacher, colleague, friend, and artist; Meredith Byers and Liliana Richter, for your courageous work with whole novels and for keeping up a dialogue with me about it; Makaira Casey, for understanding the method and lending generous help as I was writing the manuscript; Juliana Garofalo, for helping to lead discussions this year and sharing your reflections with me; my husband, Samuel Cruz, for keeping on me to make this book happen and for supporting me during the countless long nights of writing; my parents, for advice, moral support, and your roles as teachers in my life; Baba, for guiding me into the world of literature when I was a child; and all of my students, past and present, for developing whole novels with me, helping me see what's working, and always showing me how it can be better.
Introduction
When I began my teacher training at Bank Street College ten years ago, my faculty advisor, Madeleine Ray, who founded the middle school education program there, encouraged me to try an unusual approach to teaching a novel I had chosen: Scorpions, by Walter Dean Myers. I was a student teacher at Bank Street's own School for Children, a private lab school for progressive teaching on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “Instead of having them read sections and making them answer questions about each one,” she said, “let them read the whole thing. Then have them talk about it, like adults would do in a real book club.” I was not sure why she thought this was going to be a better way at that point, but I trusted her enough to give it a try. That was one of the benefits of student teaching: I got to try things out.
My students at the School for Children easily read the 210-page book in the week I gave them to complete it, recorded their thoughts on sticky notes as they read as I asked them to do, and brought their responses to share. We had a fascinating time discussing and taking apart the novel, finding evidence for our assertions, acting out sections, and writing about the big issues it brought up. The process seemed to bring a lot of the students out of their shells, out of the usual roles they assumed in the classroom, and into a multidimensional literary world. I was intrigued.
The next year I got a full-time position teaching seventh- and eighth-grade English in a public Title I middle school in East Harlem, working with a diverse group of students, many of whom were transitional English Language Learners (they were fluent in conversational English but still very much acquiring the language). I carefully chose an engaging, developmentally appropriate novel for my new students to read. I gave them a daily reading schedule and a due date on which they were to have completed the book and begin discussions and activities.
On the date the book was due, we gathered together for discussions. It quickly became apparent that exactly half the class had read the book and the other half had not gotten past the first few pages. Some students did not even seem to know there had been a deadline. I realized I had some problem solving to do if I wanted to use this approach with students of such varying levels of reading experience and study habits. And yet I was impressed that half of my students had completed the entire book on their own and were speaking their minds and analyzing the story. We had incredible discussions with the half who had finished, driven by their authentic responses to the novel and propelled by rereading sections they chose for closer analysis. They seemed intellectually and socially energized by their experience and were hungry for more. I wanted to help all my students rise to the challenge.
For the past nine years, I've been developing a dynamic student-centered structure for reading and studying whole novels as a whole class. I've continued to work with Madeleine Ray, sharing my practice with her and learning from her unwavering commitment to teaching methods that are in sync with both children's needs and the nature of literature. I've also had the chance to collaborate with other students of Madeleine, like Nancy Toes Tangel, who taught whole novels in Newark, New Jersey, for years, as well as great special education coteachers, all of whom have influenced and cocreated the program. I've worked in three different New York City public schools—in East Harlem, in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, and now at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School, which serves a diverse population of students integrated across race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. I've continued to develop the method in response to the unique needs of each group of children and the lessons I glean from each whole novel study.
I've seen my students go from struggling to decode simple texts to literally plowing through three-hundred-page eighth-grade-level novels independently. I've seen shy and reluctant students become avid discussers of literature, powerfully arguing their points, and outspoken students find new channels for their voices in writing. Most of all, I've seen my students develop a genuine love of reading and a community in which to practice it.
I've also come to understand the theoretical basis behind the approach Madeleine Ray has been advocating for years in her Children's Literature course. Teachers must protect their students' subjective experience of reading fiction if we want them to truly read and love books, study and think critically about them, and explore original ideas in their writing. We must step out of the role of the chief thinker in the classroom and create space and support for a classroom full of critical thinkers.
The Whole Novels Approach
Rather than using novels simply to teach basic literacy skills and comprehension strategies, the whole novels program approaches literature as art. Theorists such as Louise Rosenblatt have long argued that reading literature is a subjective experience, whereby an author compels a reader to enter a virtual world, live in it, and respond to it.
So often in school, we steal that experience away from students by attempting to control it in one way or another. We usually do this with the good intention of accomplishing our short-term learning objectives more quickly. In so doing, however, we bypass the natural affinity children of all ages have for stories. Ironically, we find ourselves on a much more arduous route to creating literate students and critical thinkers, one that often loses learners along the way.
Whole novels is built on the idea that students must first read and experience a work of literature wholly and authentically. After reading the entire story—with layers of support from teachers and classmates—students begin the process of analyzing the work and their reactions to it through student-driven, seminar-style discussions. In multiple rounds of these discussions, students construct deeper levels of understanding and analysis of the work. They make the shift away from their own personal responses to consider the author's perspective and investigate the decisions the author has made in creating the text.
In the whole novels program, we try to build up readers' literary repertoire—not by quickly touring genres but by selecting a series of works that build on common, developmentally relevant themes. Students begin to recognize similar themes and structural elements as they appear in increasingly difficult texts, a process that builds their confidence and understanding. The focal point of the program is the novel, but within each novel study, we include other forms that build a rich, well-rounded experience for readers. I include nonfiction texts, poetry, folktales, and films to facilitate deep examination of the themes and forms over the course of a year.
Authentic reading experiences and student-driven discussions lead organically to stronger writing. Students develop their own ideas for writing based on the content of discussions. Intellectual arguments lead to literary essays, and critiques of plot and the writer's style lead to inspired experimentation in fiction writing.
Whole novel studies serve as a foundational piece of my overall English language arts (ELA) curriculum—and much of the writing and vocabulary work we do revolves around our literature studies. However, as English teachers know well, the curricular demands of our subject are heavy. The whole novels program does not encompass my entire English language arts curriculum. Writing units and lessons may not always connect explicitly to our novel studies, and I strive to balance whole-class novel studies with independent reading cycles, where students have the opportunity to read books they've chosen for themselves. Weaving together these multiple threads is a challenge, but I'm increasingly happy with the balance I've found among them, with whole novel studies at the center propelling the group forward.
An Invitation to Readers
This book sets out my own journey working with students on whole novels—the methods, understandings, and issues. I do this partly for the humbling opportunity it affords me to take apart the practices, look at them, and understand them further. It's my hope that my experiences with whole novels will inspire other educators to engage with the ideas and methods with students in their own classrooms and school communities. I invite readers—adopters and skeptics alike—to join a dialogue about the work at www.arielsacks.com.
The whole novels structures are practical and classroom tested, but flexible enough to allow other practitioners to make their own discoveries, adaptations, and extensions of the basic model in their own contexts. The book presents a guide to implementing a full-fledged whole novels program, but it includes many single lessons, activities, and teaching strategies that teachers can adopt right away in their classrooms. Teachers can also try out a whole novel study to widen the range of experiences students have in their course without abandoning other methods with which they have found success.
My teaching experience has always been in middle school, and the materials and stories I share are primarily from my own classroom. The whole novels methodology, however, is applicable to any age group that reads novels. Madeleine Ray, Nancy Toes Tangel, and I have worked with teachers ranging from third through twelfth grades on implementing whole novel studies, and I draw from those experiences, too.
I write this today, knowing that the method is still growing, and even my own writing cannot keep up with it! I don't want readers to interpret the practices in this book as fixed or absolute. I view the whole novels method as very much alive and responsive to different teachers, situations, and groups of students. I hope this book offers a balance of big ideas about teaching literature, practical lessons and materials, and inspiration to ask questions, take risks, and innovate.
Aligning with Common Core Standards
I'm pleasantly surprised at how well the whole novels program aligns to the new Common Core State Standards. For example, the program has been especially successful in developing students' ability to critically analyze literary texts, including the author's craft and structure—a skill heavily emphasized in the Common Core Reading standards. Whole novels also allows for plenty of nonfiction reading without decreasing the amount of fiction read in a Common Core–aligned ELA classroom. To make it easier for educators to find lessons that help students develop the skills and understandings the standards require, I've tagged sections of the book that highlight teaching practices that support specific Common Core English Language Arts Standards. These sections can be found by searching specific standards through the index. (I've used the ELA Anchor Standards for College and Career Readiness, which apply to all secondary grade levels, and I've focused primarily on reading standards, although speaking, listening, and writing factor prominently into the whole novels program.)
Logistics of My Teaching Contexts
In order for you to assess how whole novels might work in your class, I offer some information on the three contexts in which I've taught whole novels:
Rafael Cordero Bilingual Academy: A bilingual program in a large Title I middle school in East Harlem. This was a neighborhood school, and nearly all of the students receive free or reduced-price lunch.I include many anecdotes about my own students in this book. The details of these stories are real, though I have sometimes created composite students. Student work samples are included, all of them unedited. I have changed the names of students to protect their identities.
How the Book Is Organized
This book is divided into two main parts. The chapters in Part 1 set out the big ideas and essential practices of the whole novels program. The chapters in Part 2 are about making whole novels work in real-world contexts. They explore how my colleagues and I have developed the whole novels program in order to support students in their participation and growth.
Two other features of this book are unique. Between several of the chapters are short sections, called Parts of the Whole, that provide important context or tools that support elements of the program or keep it moving in the right direction. In addition, I provide links for video clips from my classroom to illustrate practices I describe throughout the book.
The appendices at the end of the book include more examples of materials I use and samples of student work.
In Chapter 1, I explain just what I mean by “whole novels” and explain why this method is meaningful and appropriate for students, helping them develop a love of literature and prepare for college-level work. I make the case for student-centered pedagogy, for whole class novel studies in general, and for students to read the entire work before having analytical discussions. Following this chapter, the first Parts of the Whole section shows my annual curriculum map, illustrating how whole novel studies fit within my entire ELA course.
In Chapter 2, I discuss the five dimensions I consider when selecting literature for whole novel studies. I carefully create a year-long trajectory in which the texts as well as the ideas build in complexity.
Chapter 3 turns to the lessons I use to teach students to respond to literature using literal, inferential, and critical thinking and record their thoughts on sticky notes as they read. I explain my reasons for this approach and how it fuels the students' reading of whole novels. The Parts of the Whole section after this chapter presents a view of whole novel study from start to finish.
Chapter 4 explains how I structure the discussions that take place after students have finished reading the entire novel and my role in these discussions. I illustrate the tools of rereading and finding evidence to support claims, the role of student-generated homework assignments, and how to keep the seminars going for multiple rounds. I describe the patterns I've noticed in the shape the discussions take over three days and the kinds of discoveries students make by the second and third days. The Parts of the Whole that follows addresses lessons from beginning teachers on leading whole novel studies.
Chapter 5 outlines the ways in which the whole novels program fuels my students' writing. I provide examples of expository and creative writing opportunities that emerge from whole novel studies.
In Chapter 6, the opening chapter of Part 2, I describe the preparation and ritual I've developed for beginning a novel study, as well as the organization and accountability structures I set up that support student participation and success through the reading portion of the whole novel study. The Parts of the Whole section that follows Chapter 6 explains my classroom setup, which I've designed to support my routines and rituals.
Chapter 7 describes the group miniprojects and supplemental experiences my students engage in during the reading portion of a whole novel study. These speak to how I ensure that students are acquiring specific ELA skills and literary concepts across the year. The final Parts of the Whole, following this chapter, addresses the role of technology in the program.
Chapter 8 addresses the crucial question of how to support the appropriate growth of all students, struggling and advanced readers alike, in the whole novels program.
I end the book in Chapter 9 by sharing some data on the impact of the whole novels program on student learning. I reflect as well on why this program prepares students for the lives ahead of them and share some of the new directions my colleagues and I are exploring within the program.
Part 1
Essential Practices
1
A Case for Whole Novels for the Whole Class
“That carefully prepared leap of faith my students and I take …”
In our second whole novel study of the year, one of my most struggling readers, Hector, had a breakthrough. He is not literate in his native language of Spanish and has major difficulty decoding multisyllabic words in English. He has a bright mind and lots of potential but had resisted putting in the immense effort it would take for him to make progress. He had often dismissed learning opportunities with phrases like “I don't know” and “It's boring.” But when he borrowed a classroom MP3 player with the audio tracks of the book, Hector began to follow along in the grade-appropriate novel the class was reading together, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.
At the end of the period, the students had a five-minute social break, but Hector did not want to stop listening to and reading the book. Whereas his attitude toward education seemed to have revolved around what he couldn't do and how much he hated reading, he was suddenly saying to me and the other students, “Don't bother me! This book is really interesting !” It was the choice of the word interesting that especially called my attention. To be sure, he was happy to be able to read what everyone else was reading and share in the experience; more important, he was experiencing a feeling that was totally new to him in relation to the written word—a feeling of genuine interest.
In this chapter, I make a theoretical and practical case for why I believe the whole novels approach provides a natural and compelling way into reading for all kinds of learners. Struggling readers like Hector, who've been through the gamut of reading interventions, have woken up to literature in the whole novels program, and advanced readers, who often feel marginalized in reading classes that don't challenge them, have found belonging and new directions through this approach. Why this method works and why it's not currently a norm in schools—but could be—are the questions I begin to answer here.
Let Them Have Stories
Stories are interesting; there's no question about it. We are “the story-telling animals,” Jonathan Gottschall shows us in his fascinating book, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (2012). We live for the stuff of stories! We have an innate drive to experience and tell stories; they are part of how we think and relate to the world every moment of our lives. Stories are also an important piece of how our brains learn and remember. Dan Willingham, author of Why Don't Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom (2010), explains, “The human mind seems exquisitely tuned to understand and remember stories—so much so that psychologists sometimes refer to them as ‘psychologically privileged,’ meaning that they are treated differently in the memory than other types of material” (66–67). Later Willingham notes that in psychological experiments, stories were consistently rated more interesting than any other presentation format, even if the information was the same.
And yet we also have a widespread problem across the United States of students not wanting to read—not even stories. Kelly Gallagher, author of Readicide (2009), believes the problem has reached a point of “systemic killing of the love of reading” (2), and I can't say he's wrong. The coexistence of these two opposite realities suggests one thing to me: when students are asked to read fiction, and this mostly happens for them in school, they aren't really experiencing the stories.
Over the past ten years, it seems as though the whole country has fixed its eyes on the noble goal of teaching all children to read but gotten horribly distracted by its questionably motivated doppelganger: the goal of raising all students' literacy levels a requisite amount each year, as measured on a standardized test. Under the pressure and threats of raising scores, it is easy to lose sight of the reasons we even chose to devote our careers to teaching children to read and the reasons we love to read in the first place.
Even the strongest among us have probably found ourselves on occasion telling students they must read a particular story or random excerpt because someone with greater authority than ourselves told us that we had to do it. Or how many of us, in a moment of weakness, have caught ourselves telling students they won't pass their standardized exam or move to the next grade if they don't sit down and read right now?
These scenarios are part of the reality of teaching in the current test-driven educational climate, and they shape our students' school realities even more. Most of us know that students don't learn because they are told to and that standardized test scores do not motivate most of our students on a day-to-day basis. Furthermore, the mental frameworks of the testing culture become damaging when we build our practices on them.
To combat this pressure, we need to consciously seek out the deeper motivations, realities, and needs that exist for our students and ourselves. Then we must build our curriculum practices and the language we use with students around these deeper goals.
Humans inherently love and need stories. Why is this hard to see in schools today?
A Love Subverted: My Own Story of Reading
Strangely, I don't remember reading a single novel for any middle school English class I took in the early 1990s. I can recall the names of some of the books I pretended to read and can still picture the teacher talking about the important points of last night's chapter in front of the class. I remember one of my English teachers talking to us about To Kill a Mockingbird —a truly great book, I discovered later. I guess I found her lecture irrelevant to my life and whatever occupied my mind at that point. It didn't even occur to me to want to read it. With the information she gave in lectures and assignment sheets that allowed me to search through a chapter I never read for the answers, I was able to do well on the tests, or whatever else was required, without more than reading a chapter here or there. And this was before the days of finding book reviews and summaries on the Internet in seconds flat!
Secretly, however, I was a big reader. My grandmother, Baba, an educator herself, always gave me gifts of the latest and best adolescent fiction. These novels appealed to my own interests. I remember The Mozart Season, by Virginia Euwer Wolff, about a girl my age who was practicing Mozart for a big violin audition. I instantly connected with this book because I, too, studied violin seriously and battled the challenge of practicing. I also remember staying up late into the night reading The Devil's Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen, about a Jewish American girl, like myself, who asks at Passover why we have to remember the past and is transported to an alternate reality in which she is a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp.
I didn't stay up reading these books because someone would be checking the next day to see if I had read. Nor was I motivated by some abstract notion that I had to improve my reading skills. In fact, no one at school even knew what I read at home. Had I shared more with them, my teachers might have known me better; however, as a middle school student, I was concerned primarily with what my friends and classmates thought. Sadly, I perceived that reading was not a socially acceptable hobby in my ‘tween social circle, so I read privately. I talked to Baba on the phone about the books, but I never let them see the light of day in school.
My experience may not resonate with everyone, but the disengagement I felt is no stranger to English classrooms today. Many adolescents don't see their interests represented in the assigned reading they do for school and the tasks tacked on to check their understanding and teach skills with no discernable application. Gallagher (2009) argues that the limiting of authentic reading experiences is one of the key causes of “readicide” (4).
Breaking Free of the Chief Thinker Role: Putting Students’ Interests First
One of the barriers to authentic reading experiences for kids is what I call “the chief thinker” role, which is when teachers privilege their own questions and interpretations over those of their students. It can be tempting to do, because adults do know more about the world than children do, and part of our job is to impart some of our knowledge to students. Also, many of our own teachers positioned themselves as chief thinkers, and it can be difficult to find models who truly depart from this one.
However, we can't teach by doing the thinking for the students. If we do, we discourage them from connecting authentically with the world the author has created, effectively robbing them of this experience. Under these conditions, students become insecure about their own thinking (perhaps asking themselves, Why can't I understand this book the way my teacher does?), especially if they don't have people like my grandmother in their lives to validate their thinking behind the scenes. For a child's interpretation of a work of literature to be measured against that of an adult is not only unfair, but also misunderstands what the act of reading fiction actually involves.
At its core, a literature program must answer and be propelled by the desire humans have to experience stories of all forms, the nature of which changes over the course of a reader's life. (More on this in Chapter 2.) Often teachers' efforts to improve students' technical skills in reading seem to stray from this crucial aspect of a reader's development.
When we read fiction, our intention goes beyond comprehension. It is a deeper, highly personal process. In Fiction and the Unconscious (1962), Simon Lesser, a psychologist and literary critic who studied and wrote extensively on the psychological impact of literature, explains the phenomenon:
Fiction accomplishes something more miraculous than [a formulated understanding]. It involves us in the events it puts before us, without permitting us to become aware of the nature and extent, or usually even the fact, of our involvement. The emotions fiction arouses in us are evidence of this: they are too powerful to be explained solely on the basis of our cognitive reactions, conscious and even unconscious. (189)
If we read only to comprehend, we would read every text with equal interest and with little or no response. But as both teachers and readers, we know this is hardly the case. On the contrary, we read fiction to gain experience. Under the right conditions, we take great pleasure in the process, which allows us to inhabit the lives of others: we can journey to foreign lands, solve murder cases, get swept up in great love affairs, and confront our worst fears. Much like the compelling virtual worlds of games (though there are key differences in the use of imagination during reading versus video games), these opportunities provide a powerful incentive for children and adolescents to read fiction.
Without student motivation to experience a story, our efforts at teaching comprehension through fiction are dull, and our attempts to engage students in literary analysis lack purpose and context.
Back to Hector, and his comment, “Don't bother me! This book is really interesting!” The feeling he had at that moment is more compelling than any achievement goal we can set for kids. We must keep that reality front and center in the literature classroom, no matter what other priorities we have for our students.
Why Study Whole Novels as a Whole Class?
Independent reading programs, where students select their own reading materials, have done a lot to connect students with developmentally appropriate books and create classrooms full of readers. I'm compelled by the richness of Donalyn Miller's practices as a teacher of reading, revealed in The Book Whisperer (2009), and I've learned from her classroom, especially when it comes to my own practices around students' independent reading. If I were a parent, I would be thrilled for my child to be in her sixth-grade English language arts class.
At the same time, I would not want my child's entire English language arts education to be structured around independent reading, as some proponents of reading workshop models suggest. The main argument against whole class novel studies has been that one book will never meet all the needs of a whole class of students and that the traditional methods of teaching whole class novels are flawed. While it is a challenge to select books and work with them in ways that benefit all students, I believe there are needs that whole class novels can serve, which pure independent reading models don't.
Even Miller writes at the end of The Book Whisperer, “Yes, students benefit from the deep analysis of literature that a thorough look at one book provides.” She adds, “You create a common literacy experience to which you can make future connections, and reading a book together fosters community among your students and you.” But, she qualifies, “There needs to be a balance between picking a book apart to examine its insides and experiencing the totality of what a book offers” (127). In her suggestions for alternatives to traditional practices, she calls for a rethinking of the whole class novel.
The whole novels program, which I have been developing over the past ten years with Madeleine Ray of Bank Street College of Education, is a radical rethinking of how to engage students with works of literature using the novel as the primary literary form. In the whole novels program, we honor the nature of the literary art by having students look at the whole work, not breaking the experience into little pieces. Through the work, we create an intellectual community that is socially relevant for students and gives them opportunities to build the critical-thinking skills, creativity, and habits of mind they need in the twenty-first century. The shared experience capitalizes on the drive of adolescents to connect to their peers and construct knowledge together.
Madeleine Ray distinguishes between a literature program and a reading program in her Children's Literature course at Bank Street College of Education. She writes the following in a course handout:
A literature program focuses on the reader's response to the literary work and not on reading skills per se… In reading we emphasize code breaking; the specific meaning of words in sentences … these are denotative activities and skills… Literary “skills”… are mainly connotative. The reader, through experiences with various fictional works, builds awareness of varying levels of quality in writing; of imaginative power in the author's ability to tell a story that [continously] engages the reader; of uniqueness in style through the use of language, and the unity of the world of literature as old plots are reimagined and permutated into new stories.
We build on the human desire to enter a virtual world by structuring a literature program in a way that protects the reader's experience of the story. Children should experience compelling works of literature that in their conflicts and themes are relevant to their development, and in their use of language and other craft elements are aesthetic works of art. The experience becomes intellectual when students can share their varied responses in a community forum and begin to study the ways in which authors are able to use language to provoke certain responses in their readers. We look at the ways in which those responses differ for each reader and what those differences mean.
These critical analysis skills are central in the Common Core State Standards, but teachers are struggling to figure out how to achieve them in ways that engage students at their level. Whole novels provides a way to bring about critical analysis quite naturally. Perhaps ironically, I've found that the key to helping students take a work apart for close analysis is letting them read the whole thing first. Figure 1.1 shows how the interaction between student and text works in the whole novels program, leading to critical analysis of the work.
Figure 1.1 Whole Novels Reader Response and Analysis Cycle
Why We Read the Whole Book First
Imagine going to see a movie in the theater. You've heard good things about this movie, and you feel that special movie theater excitement when the lights go down and the movie begins.
After the second scene, the movie stops. The lights come on, and someone at the front of the theater with a microphone starts asking people what they think about the movie. Why do you think the director made this movie? What is motivating the characters? How will it end? The person in the front then begins taking people's comments about the movie so far.
You try to listen, but you were much more interested in the movie itself than in what random people in the theater think about it. The person at the microphone starts talking about how one of the characters in the movie reminds her of herself when she was young. Someone next to you whispers, “I don't care what these people think about this right now. I came to see the movie!” The two of you begin chatting about other things in an effort to kill time until the movie resumes. Finally, the person in front says, “Well, that's all the time we have for today. Come back tomorrow, same time, same place, to see the next scene!”
Would you come back?
Now consider another scenario. You've just seen a really interesting movie in the theater. When it finishes, the lights come up, and someone in front of the theater with a microphone explains that there will be a brief break during which people are encouraged to visit the concession stands. Then people are invited to discuss the film in special rooms in small groups. The theater will even have the ability to rerun certain scenes, such as the opening scene, to spark discussion. You happen to have an hour to kill until you need to move to your next commitment.
Would you consider participating in such a discussion?
The whole novels method builds on the reader's interest in experiencing the story by allowing students to read the entire book before formal discussions of the work begin. This may seem logical, as in the movie analogy. Adult book clubs use the same structure: members usually take a month or so to read on their own time and then come together to discuss the entire book. College seminars work the same way, using a faster pace of about a week to read a book.
In my experience, however, having spent time in many different English language arts classrooms in public, private, and charter schools in New York City, I have very rarely seen students read an entire novel before being asked to speak or write analytically about it. The standard for whole class novel studies in both traditional and progressive classrooms seems to be that students read and discuss the books chapter by chapter.
Why Not Discuss Chapter by Chapter?
The chapter-by-chapter model parses up the reader's experience in a way that takes a lot of the pleasure out of the process and can even interfere with comprehension. The story is a piece of art that is intended to be experienced as a whole. If we were reading a collection of short stories or poems, we could naturally discuss each story or poem. But a novel is a longer form created to allow readers to more deeply enter an elaborate world the author has developed. The power of the novel comes from the time we spend in these worlds with the characters, experiencing the conflicts, the symbols, and the author's unique style of prose. In the classroom, we can build a social experience of living in the literary world without discussing each chapter.
The prolonged experience in the literary world of the novel is crucial to understanding and appreciating the form. Lesser (1962) explains that in order for a reader to become captivated by the world of a story, “the indispensable condition of such an experience, and the first stage of the experience itself, is a relaxation of the vigilance usually exercised by the ego. A willing suspension of disbelief, a receptive attitude, is essential not only to the enjoyment but even the understanding of comprehension” (192). Reading fiction is a highly personal experience, in which the reader is actively participating. In her article, “Literature: The Reader's Role” (1960), Louise Rosenblatt describes it this way:
In reading a poem or novel, we are preoccupied with the experience we are living through in the actual reading. We are intimately involved in what we are recreating under the guidance of the text… We live through the suspense, the foreboding, the ultimate resolution. The structure of the work for us is the structure of our experience while under its spell… No one else can read—i.e., experience—a literary work of art for us. (39)
What happens to a student's experience of a work of fiction—to the student's state of receptive relaxation—when, with the best of intentions, we constantly interrupt with formal requests to evaluate, predict, and express their thoughts about the story while they are busy reading? Are they able to remain receptive to the world the author is creating, when, like overbearing parents, we try to control their experience? When adults read, we allow the author to guide us with nothing but the work of art he or she created. We need to help students develop that special relationship with a text rather than trying to be a third member of the relationship—especially since we are authority figures for students, and they are conditioned to look to us for answers and interpretations. This reality makes it far more difficult for students to relax their egos while they read. We need to step away to allow genuine interaction between our students and novels.
As adult readers, we have a tendency to want our students to “get everything” in the novel, so we don't want to let them read too much without us. When we try to direct a student to discover all of the features of a text during a first reading, Lesser (1962) reminds us that we “may require him to read with a strained alertness, which is inimical to enjoyment” (193). That state of pleasure and relaxation is necessary not only for a student to like a book, but also for a reader to be able to understand the work of fiction. Kelly Gallagher identifies this problem as “overteaching books,” citing it as one of the four causes of “readicide.”
We also have to understand that our reading of a story is colored by our own imaginations and therefore is different for each reader. Contrasting writers with painters, Gottschall (2012) explains that writers “give us expert line drawings with hints on filling them in. Our minds provide most of the information in the scene, most of the color, shading, and texture. When we read stories, this massive creative effort is going on all the time, chugging away beneath our awareness” (5). If we push our own interpretations of fiction on our students, we also push our own imaginations on them, which can shut down their imaginative process of reading the novel. If their imaginative process shuts down, they will lose the ability to comprehend the story. Thus, teachers can easily shoot themselves in the foot as they try to help their students “get the story”!
When we allow students to read an entire novel, they can experience it fully and truly themselves, even though this understanding may be limited to their relatively few years on the planet, as compared with our own.
Student-Driven Discussions: Making Meaning of the Whole Experience
Armed with their story experience, students bubble over with things to say in a discussion, often surprising even themselves. Though I play a key role as facilitator, students decide what gets discussed and they can say anything they want about the book. I find that they are eager to listen to other students' reactions to characters and issues in the book and use evidence to argue their points. (For more on how I structure whole novel discussions, see Chapter 5.)
In whole novel discussions, students are motivated to reread sections that caused confusion, or were particularly intense, for deeper meaning and alternative interpretations. In the second and third readings of passages during discussions, students naturally become more analytical in a way that does not happen in a first reading. At that point, the work of critical analysis that many teachers labor at doing with students along the way can be done much more efficiently, powered by intense student motivation.
The practice of having students read an entire novel before holding discussions does present some challenges for us, but in teaching, we constantly face challenges and choose which ones to address. This, I believe, is worth taking on because it provides meaningful, pleasurable experiences for students and leads to high levels of critical thinking and creativity. When I prioritize the innate drive children have to experience a story, I find that they are willing to work hard to develop the reading skills they need to sustain the work.
It's sort of like my friend who has just fallen in love with someone who speaks only Japanese. Whereas before, he had only marginal interest in learning Japanese, he is now receiving regular love letters in Japanese. He has figured out how to translate them. He seeks help from tutors and spends the time it takes to learn the meaning in the words and to be able to respond. Love of story and membership in a novel community can create the same phenomenon for struggling readers, as it is doing for Hector and others in my classes. In order to create such conditions, we need to believe in the power of the stories we select and allow students to experience them the way their authors intended for them to be read.
But Will They Read It?
In conversations with teachers about the whole novels program, a common concern is that they fear, or expect, that students simply won't read the book. I understand the worry; however, I've spent years devising ways to make sure all my students are able and motivated to do the reading. Here are the keys I have found to making this happen:
