“Our relationship with literary characters and with the authors who created them are what brought us to reading. Our love of reading is what brought us to teaching the English language arts. In some way then, literary characters made us what we are today.” pg 20

In chapter two, authors Smith and Wilhelm explain what they see as what really matters about teaching literary characterization. For starters they say that getting to know literary characters should be carried out in the same manner in which we get to know the flesh-and -blood folks who populate our lives. So just how do we do that?

1) We create a general impression on the basis of a person's traits.
2) We recognize that some characteristics matter more than others.
3) We create expectations on the basis of group membership.

As leaders in the classroom, we must consider the instructional implications of these tendencies. Considering how important each of these factors is not only in literature but also in life, we must guide the students to do the following:

- recognize not only a character's particular traits but also how those traits interact to form an overall impression of the character.

- recognize when they ought to modify their first impression.

- test stereotypes against the individuating information they glean from the text.

- try on the various perspectives of the characters about whom they are reading.


Problems with Traditional Instruction

Many of the traditional units presented with the intent of teaching characterization share common flaws:

- they emphasize declarative (knowing) rather than procedural (doing) knowledge. “Technical vocabulary associated with characterization doesn't help readers do anything, ...” pg 28

- they don't lend themselves to transfer. “Answering questions that the teacher asks cannot help students do the kind of mindful abstraction they need to do to transfer what we teach them to new situations.” pg 28

- they don't reflect the way we understand people in our lives. “...although building from the bottom up is crucially important, so too is developing a general impression and then checking it against details.” pg. 29

Keeping this in mind , we can use the following ideas to critique lessons presenting characterization.

Application - - Ideas to critique a characterization literature lesson

- Does the lesson help students develop procedural knowledge?
- Does it cause them to reflect what we do when we try to understand people in our own lives?
- Does it foster transfer to other works and to life?

Preparing Students to Understand Character

Given how critically important understanding characters is to understanding literature, it's crucial to take some time to help students understand just what they ought to be up to when they are working to understand characters. This means both helping students understand the importance of the instructional implications discussed above and helping them avoid two often seen mistakes.

- focusing on external traits rather than internal traits. Students can easily tell you that a character is short, tall, etc .but find it difficult to say they are curious or greedy. According to the authors of this work, “external traits are noteworthy only when they tell us something deeper about the character.”

- focusing on states (e.g. She was happy when she won.) instead of traits (e.g. She is a happy person.)


The activities which will follow in our next blog are designed to help students avoid these problems and to enact the four instructional implications important to characterization discussed above.


Stay tuned.

Fresh Takes on Teaching Literary Elements
How to Teach What Really Matters About Character, Setting, Point of View, and Theme

by M.W. Smith and J.D. Wilhelm



Welcome to the world of Literary Elements! I’ve selected this text because teaching the elements of literature is a very large part of what I am asked to do. What I really want to discover through reading this work is how to (as our classmate Rachael said) become the “guide on the side” and get away from my current role as “sage on the stage” .

This text is coauthored by Wilhelm, who also wrote You Gotta Be the Book. I really enjoyed the first chapter of that work, which we were assigned to read for class, so I am anticipating that this will be a very helpful and applicable book. I wish that we could have a literature circle discussion over this text, because I would love to hear what each of you would have to say about it. Perhaps we will have the chance to do that some through your comments to this blog.

Before getting into the meat of the work, the authors explain that there are six principles that underlie their ideas.

Principle 1: The importance of the why - It is critical for students to understand why we ask them to do what we ask them to do. Authors tell that the “most powerful way (they) have found to demonstrate the why of what (they’re) teaching is to embed (their) instructions in inquiry units which focus on essential questions.” Examples are “What makes me me?” and “To what extend are people responsible for what happens to them?” Asking a big question makes the unit a social project of exploration.


Principle 2: The importance of how – Teachers must focus on procedural knowledge – how to read literature, rather than declarative knowledge – technical vocabulary and the details of a particular interpretation of a text. “The what is best learned and the most useful when learned in the context of the how.”

Principle 3: The importance and difficulty of transfer – How does what we do today prepare students for what they will do later? We want them to transfer what they learn about people and stories to their understanding of the literature they read, to their writing, to other texts they read, and to their lives.

Principle 4: The importance of sequence – Teachers must activate schema, move from known to new, begin instruction by activating students’ existing knowledge about what we want them to learn.

Principle 5: The importance of providing opportunities for choice, co-production, and discussion - Teachers should provide opportunities for students to stake their identity in their pursuit of individual interests and choices. In this way, we get to know them and they get to know each other.

Principle 6: The importance of connecting reading to writing – What students learn about reading and interpreting literary elements can be applied to their own composing.

Journal entry for this chapter:

Why does what I am teaching right now matter right now? What work can it possibly do? How does is count for readers, writers, and problem solvers? When the author stated that, “somehow he had lost sight of teaching purposefully” I could totally relate. He said, “ He’d just been assigning stuff and letting the curriculum or anthology be his guide.” Wow, this sounds just like me!! The type of instruction described as declarative is, sadly, the method used in my classroom. There is little sequencing and very little choice given to students. Luckily there is the strong connection between reading and writing. I really hope that this book will inspire me with practical ways in which to make changes in these areas.

And so, I read on.

Blogging about Blogging!

This summer I started university classes to work on a master’s degree. WOW! Have things changed since I was a student. I have had to learn so many new things. I knew that I would be introduced to new content material in my classes, but learning that material is only one of the new challenges I face.

For one, I was commuting to the university via mass transit. I had to learn how to take the shuttle to the train station, the train to the bus, and the bus to the campus. That was very stressful… worrying about being late for class or getting stranded after the last train had gone.

In addition, my classes are taught using very modern methods. My teacher referred to materials that I had to find on ereserve and I scratched my head. Luckily, I was sitting next to a young and hip student who helped me out with that.

One of my classes was online and that teacher required me to start a blog. A blog of all things… I didn’t even know what it was, so I asked my teen. “It’s like keeping a journal online, but everyone can read it,” she told me. Well, I don’t know how comfortable I am with that idea!

I love to talk with people or write through email, but blogging is different in one very significant way. I cannot address the audience one by one. When I interact with people I wear different hats so to speak. I use different tones and discuss different topics. I would not have the same conversation with my grandmother as I would with a peer or a colleague. I would not discuss the same topics with my boss that I would with my neighbor. So how would I write a blog that each of these people might read? I would probably feel the need to remain very superficial. My writing would lack the personal feel that my dear ol’ granny would miss. I definitely wouldn’t tell all.

What makes a quality blog? I really find people’s vivid descriptions of what they ate for breakfast, where they went, how hot was etc. a bore. That is not a quality blog to me. Unless, of course, the writer is on a vacation or trip. A good blog for me would be one in which the author tells about an experience or gives information which I would like to have but have not been able to do or attain at this point in time.

So, I guess a blog must be written with a specific audience in mind. My blog will be written for my classmates and all educators who are interested in learning ways to improve the instruction of literature in their middle school or high school classes. Not that I am an expert myself. I am studying this right along side them, but I will be summarizing a great book written for just that purpose.

Until next time,
Penny

p.s. One blog I found that might become a favorite to literacy students is:
blog.readingapprenticeship.org