As Bushman & Haas
(2006) explain, “teaching literature…should be an ongoing process between
reader and text,” (p.60) as opposed to a strictly teacher-oriented lecture
style of teaching. In my personal experience, my best learning comes from more hands-on
experience. It feels more meaningful and I find that I don’t absorb the
material as well if a teacher just talks at me about a novel or sentence
structure for an hour; my attention wanes and I start asking myself questions like
what should I have for dinner? I know
many students who do excel at learning from a lecture-based style but it seems
that the majority of students don’t. If we’re being honest, that’s probably
because being talked at is boring. That
being said, that certainly doesn’t mean that English class has to be boring.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t uncommon to hear a student in my high school exclaim how
dull English class is. As Probst argues, the curricula don’t help the case as
it “demand[s] the memorizing of information about authors, texts, [and] events”
(as cited in Bushman & Haas, 2006, p.56). Instead of this kind of evaluation
system, the “curricula [should] endorse a reader-response base for teaching
literature [to] help promote the possible gain for students” (Bushman &
Haas, 2006, p. 58) in the hopes of preparing students to be lifelong readers. There
are so many creative and student-oriented activities you could use within an
English class to get students actively engaged in their learning that it really
doesn’t make sense not to utilize them.
One
such activity is the literature circle, which brings “the established adult
literacy structure of voluntary reading groups
into the public schools” (Daniels, 2006, p.10). As an adult, participating in
our in-class literature circle started to verge on tedium, but that was only
because of the book we were discussing. What
Happened to Serenity? by P.J. Sarah Collins was the kind of book where you
knew how it was going to end barely after it had even started. It wasn’t exactly
the most exciting book to discuss within a group of 20-somethings. It probably
wouldn’t have been that exciting for a group of 16 year olds either. However, that’s
not to say our literature circle worked our poorly, because it didn’t. The
different roles prompted us to have a variety of conversations and we did have
stimulating discussions over the ideas we thought the book was based off and
what it reminded us of. Also, it’s always eye-opening to hear another person’s
perspective or insights. It’s just that I think the literature circle would
have been more effective if the book we read had been one that our group had
been more interested in.
On
that note, as a teacher you can either assign students a book or give them a
chance to choose their own book for a literature circle. If you give them the
choice, you increase chances of being able to please everyone with book
selection and as a result you’re basically removing the obstacle of disinterest
in the book. For young adult readers, I really don’t see many cons to using
literature circles in the classroom. One possible limitation I could see is
distraction. It’s very easy to get sidetracked when working in a group of
friends – a fact that remains throughout life. This could pose as a difficulty
if the students weren’t doing their work, but as far as limitations go it’s
nothing a little strategic thinking can’t overcome. One of the most prominent
benefits I see with literature circles is that they give students more equal opportunity
to be active within class. Students all get their chance to talk and voice
their opinions within their small groups, which is something that isn’t always
available in larger group discussions. Many students don’t like speaking in front
of the entire class either – I’m not a big talker in class myself – so another
advantage is that there’s “less risk than in a whole-class discussion,”
(Daniels, 2006, p. 11) and students feel more at ease in this social situation.
Reader-response
based activities such as literature circles are a much more engaging way to
connect with a novel as well. Would you rather take the time to write a test
with specified right and wrong answers or be able to draw your own conclusions
and form your own opinions about a piece of literature? I’d rather connect with
the literature on a personal level, and Harvey Daniels seems to agree. Daniels
states that literature circles “welcome, celebrate, and build upon students’
responses to what they read” (as cited in Bushman & Haas, 2006, p. 71), can
you think of a more motivating approach than that? Literature circles allow
imagination, creativity, and collaboration; they enable students to think for
themselves; they promote open and thought-provoking conversations; they support
meaningful transactions between literature and reader. There are endless
possibilities. In terms of literature circles, the pros definitely outweigh the
cons.
References
Bushman,
J., & Haas, K. (2006). Using young adult literature in the English
classroom. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
Daniels,
H. (2006). What’s the next big thing with literature circles? Voices from the Middle, 13(4), 10-15.
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