Teaching English, How To.... Essential Ideas 11

The first-grade and secondary English connection. In first grade, teachers use the directed reading assignment to develop comprehension skills. So should all secondary teachers in all subjects to help students read material that is too difficult for them.
In first grade, students learning to write use “invented spelling,” estimating the spelling of words they do not know how to spell, so that their writing is not interrupted and they can make use of their full vocabulary in writing. Spelling can be corrected in the editing stage of the writing process. Secondary students should also use invented spelling so that they can make full use of their writing vocabulary. In both first grade and in secondary school, teachers should make sure that the spelling is corrected before publishing or sending the writing home where the presence of misspelled words will produce considerable upset.
Finally, the issue of basal vs. whole language, an “either/or” proposition, should be resolved by using both, just as at the secondary level, the writing process vs. writing product issue should be resolved by emphasizing both. Ideally, when students use the writing process, they produce a better product. It is amazing to me that educators who preach critical thinking fall into the either/or trap so often. p. 353.

Why read literature? I think a greater realization of life, with its happiness, its tragedies and other realities, is the reason to read literature. Simply living life is like journalism which reports the facts. Reading literature enables us to feel the emotions, understand the complex motivations and appreciate the dilemmas of life that underlie the facts. The New Criticism had the effect of moving the study of literature to an emphasis on the technical nature of the language of literature and away from what literature does best for most people who are not English majors: give insight into life. “Do any human beings ever realize life, while they live it—every, every minute?” asks Emily of the Stage Manager in Wilder’s Our Town. He replies, “No. The saints and poets maybe—they do some.” And I add, so do those who read and understand literature. p. 388.

Joseph Conrad on literature: “My task is by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see.” William Faulkner on literature: “The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.” p. 380.

Significant sentences: Students collect memorable sentences from the literature they read. Helps them interpret the literature and to defend their points of view in a discussion. Also a resource for useful quotes when writing and speaking. Significant sentences provoke thought. p. 381.

Finding time to read: Read 15 minutes a day and you will read 20 books a year. p. 393.

One approach to reading a classic. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. 1. Background information: a review of events and people from 1800 to 1815. 2. Other literary works from the time of Jane Austen. 3. Reflections on the title. 4. Selected quotations from Pride and Prejudice. What do you infer about the novel from these quotations? 5. Sample the novel. Read for five minutes near the beginning, in the middle, three-fourths through the novel and near the end of the novel. Any unfamiliar vocabulary? What questions do you have about the novel? 6. Read to answer your questions. p. 398.

Having trouble becoming involved in reading a classic novel? Read a paragraph a page until you become hooked.

What is a discussion? Someone has said that there are two types of discussion: one in which the teachers ask questions to which they already have answers. The students are either right or wrong, depending on what the teacher thinks. In short, the teachers have a discussion with themselves as they check to learn if the students have read the assignment and if they agree with the teacher’s interpretations. The second type of discussion involves exploring the answers to questions about which the teacher and students are uncertain. Real questions to which no one has the answer = real discussion. For me, real literary discussions begin with students’ questions about what they have read. p. 419.

A K-12 literature program. In elementary school, the best in children’s literature. In middle school and junior high, the best in Young Adult and popular adult literature. In high school, the best in American, British and world literatures. p. 391.

Censorship. Preparing for it. Develop rationales for teaching books that are potentially controversial. Cf. http://www.ncte.org/. Summary of book; summary of controversial parts of the book; appropriate grade level for the book; value of the book for the students; objectives for teaching the book; summary of reviews of the book; teaching methods; assignments; possible objections and responses to those objections. p. 434.