Farewell to a Farewell to Arms: Deemphasizing the Whole-Class Novel [PDF]

Farewell to a Farewell to Arms: Deemphasizing the Whole-Class Novel. Author(s): Douglas Fisher and Gay Ivey. Source: The

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Farewell to a Farewell to Arms: Deemphasizing the Whole-Class Novel Author(s): Douglas Fisher and Gay Ivey Source: The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 88, No. 7 (Mar., 2007), pp. 494-497 Published by: Phi Delta Kappa International Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20442305 Accessed: 06/01/2010 17:29 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pdki. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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DEEMPHASIZING

Arms:

THE WHOLE-CLASS

NOVEL

The common practice inEnglish language arts classes of assigning all students to read the same book at the same time is a tradition, the authors believe, that would be more honored in the breach than the observance.

BY DOUGLAS

FISHER AND GAY IVEY

SKANY group of adults ranging in age from their early twenties to late fiftieswhat they remember middle or high school reading, and you will abDout no doubt hear an unenthusiastic

and often bitter,.-,

chorus of such titles as ToKill aMockingbird, Lo of the Flies, and other classic novels longcon sidered standardand acceptable fare inEnglish classrooms. The younger setmay chime inwith Parrot in theOven, Looking forAlaska, or some other young-adult novels that have become contemporary classics. Not many adults have greatmemories of assigned readingfromEnglish class, yet the one-size-fits-all class novel persists as the centerpiece of instruction inmany micidle and high school classrooms.As teacher educators and former English and reading teachers, we also know that

getting stucdentsto read these selections continues to be difficult,even in the best of circumstances.A high schoolmemory sums up thissituationfor i us. Gay recalls a nighttime bus ride back from a National Honor Society, field trilp to an amusement park near the end of her junior year. Nearly4 -a

thirdof the studentsclusteredat theback of thebuswith theCliffsNotes for The ScarletLetter,not because they needed to read itby the following morning but because they had to read itandwrite a critical analysis of it by the followingmorning! Even for these high-achieving high-schoolers, the goal was just to get the assignment finished.: 5' [DOUGLAS FISHER ix a?protessor- ot lanvu u>e and literacy ediucation at San Diego State Univei sitv.

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Forstrugglingstudents, the choice isapt to be noncom pliance. Often, the teacher notices that the students have not read the text and so reads it to them.We know that teacher read-aloudsare a powerful tool forbuilding vocab ulary and background knowledge, butwe worry that they are being used to supplant assigned readings.Read-alouds should extend students' thinking, not replace it.

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vary too greatly, and every class has students who read above or below theirgrade level. The bottom line is that,when teachersrequireall students to read the same book at the same time, English classes are neither standard-centered nor student-centered. As a result, these classes can respond neither to the academic agenda (i.e., the sanctioned curriculumas defined by stan

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As an alternative, in the hope that students can be co dards)nor to the studentagenda (i.e., reading,writing, speak ing,and listeningthatsatisfystudents'own reasons to know, erced into reading a novel that they have been assigned, experience, and relate).Radical as itmay seem to.some read teachers often resort to testing their knowledge about it. ers, to us it'sonly common sense to reconsider the use of Some teachers give oral summaries of the contents so that thewhole-class novel. studentswho have not completed their assigned readings can "keep up."Others show the film version so that stu dents have a sense of the content. Regardless ofwhich al WIDE, FOCUSED READING ternative isselected, studentsare not readingmore or read AS AN ALTERNATIVE ingbetter as a resultof thewhole-class novel. Instead,stu dents are reading lessand are lessmotivated, lessengaged, Class novels may actually limit or restrict the variety, teachers in and less likely to read the future.Meanwhile, depth, and quantity of students' reading.We would argue continue their endless- and often fruitless- search for thatwe can expand students' reading by significantly in betterways to persuadestudentsto readtheirassignednovel.' creasing the number and variety of texts inEnglish class Given this frustrationand resistance,what is itabout a rooms and by offering a greater number of creative oppor "class set" of novels thatcaptivates teachers so much that tunities to read in school.We have identified a number of We of itsuse dominates English language arts instruction? factorsnecessary to balance students'preferences for read ten hear thatcurriculumstandardsdictate the decision and ingwith the demands of a standards-drivencurriculum.4 require, for example, that all sixth-gradersread The Giver As an alternative to using thewhole-class novel, we offer or thatall ninth-gradersreadRomeo andJuliet. (Of course, teachers five guidelines for practice. the latter is a play, not a novel, but it is typically assigned 1. Identifyuniversal themes ratherthan individualbooks and taught in the same way.) But even a cursory review of as a way of guiding instruction.Inour professionaldevelop content standards from several state departments of edu ment work with teachers inmiddle and high schools, we cation reveals that specific texts and authors are not actu are consistently asked how to get students motivated to ally named. Rather, students are expected to learnhow to read.We suspect that the real question, the question be read,write, and speak about a varietyof texts,and the stan hind the question, is "How do we get students to read The dards typically emphasize literarydevices, reading com Iliad?"(Choose any other institutionalized assignment if prehension skills, and writing strategies. Homer didn'tmake your school's list this year.) We also hear quite frequently that class novels are se Research offers excellent advice on getting students to lected because they are "good for students."Butwe know read:choose texts thatmatter to students,5create contexts thatclassics- and even award-winningcontemporaryclas inwhich students find intrinsicreasons to read ratherthan sics do not make the listof what adolescents prefer to reasons related to external rewardsor consequences,6 and read.2Inaddition,we know that students still struggling to provide time to read in school.7Butmotivation isalsomulti read do not get better at reading from tackling difficult dimensional and may be heavily influenced by such fac books.3 Itwould be hard to locate one book thataddresses tors as the student's own "perceived competence."8 The the needs of all students in any given classroom. Life ex class-novel experience rarelymeets these criteria. Instead, periences that enable a reader to make sense of a book you have studentswith a text they do not like,which they MARCH 2007

495

are directed to read forpurposes other than theirown, with little time in school to do so. To top it off, the books are typically so difficult that students feel overmatched by the challenges they present.And that feeling isnot unreason able, since these are the same kinds of texts that intimi date even competent adult readers.

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Insteadof defining instruction inEnglish language arts by the books ("Iteach TheOdyssey." "IteachOld Yeller."), teachers should focus instructionon big ideas or univer sal themes, such as "TheHero's Journey,""Mattersof Life and Death," or "AretheGreeks and Romans stillwith us to day?"These ideas and concepts are surelywithin the grasp of most students, but it isdifficult to findout what students know and can do within the context of one very hard book. Big ideas pique students' interestand allow every student in the class to engage with the topic using his or her own background, interests,and skills. 2. Select texts thatspan a wide rangeof difficulty levels. Ifour goal is to encourage students to readmore and bet ter, thenwe have to ensure that they are reading books they can read. Simply requiring students to read "grade level" textswill not improve their skills. However, invit ing students to readwidely in response to a big idea, ques tion, or theme requires that they have access to a signifi cant number of books at a variety of levels of difficulty that provide diverse perspectives on the topic. By theway, we don't want readers to thinkwe're op posed to the specific books we've named in this article. In fact, they and myriad other "classics"are excellent exam ples of literature.Charlotte'sWeb might be a highly suitable addition to a collection of cutting-edge young adult and children'sbooks thatexplore the theme of friendshipswith responsibility.Similarly,ToKill aMockingbird might be an appropriateoption ina studyof discrimination, racism,and prejudice, but itneed not be given higher status thanmore student-friendly,high-interest books on the topic, such as Chris Crowe's Getting Away With Murder: The TrueStory of theEmmettTillCase or ToniMorrison's Remember: The Journey toSchool Integration. Our experience suggests that,when students readwide ly frombooks they have selected, they aremore prepared 496

PHI DELTA KAPPAN

to discuss the books with theirpeers and towrite complex analyses of the themes and ideas.What's more, they are motivated to readmore. 3. Select texts thataddress contemporary issuesand that are engaging. Studentswant to readabout things thatmat ter to them.They want to think, form opinions, challenge

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and be challenged, and learn.Studentswant to readwide ly inmultiple genres andmedia- graphic novels, manga, Internetsites, informational texts, and so on. All of these text sources can be used as students consider the big idea or theme that the class is exploring together.Themes we select should allow students to engage with contemporary issues issuesthat theyandwe are strugglingwith- while readingboth currentand classicworks.We agreewith liter ary scholarswho suggest that literatureprovides the reader with a mirror to examine oneself, awindow to consider alter native experiences and beliefs, and a door towalk through foreverchanged.We justhaven't found the book thatdoes this for every member of every class at the same time. 4. Orchestrate instruction thatbuilds students' compe tence.Another drawback of thewhole-class novel is the type of instruction it engenders. Teachers using a single book with a group of students often revertto lecturingand assigning independent reading. From the perspective of the students, the teacher knows everything (from the "cor rect" symbolism to the appropriate predictions), and stu dents have permission to remain passive. Turningthis situationaround so that the teacherprovides modeling, coaching, scaffolding, and guiding requires that the teacher use time differently. For example, the expert teacherswe love towatch startwith a read-aloudor shared reading.This time is not used to read something that the students should have already readbut isan opportunity for the teacher to share his or her thinking about a textwith the class.Then studentsmove intogroups- some are read ing, others are discussing books, others arewriting or get ting peer feedback on theirwriting- while the teacher meets with specific students to provide guided instruction. This organizational system allows teachers to move fromassuming "all the responsibility forperforming a task . . . to a situation inwhich the students assume all of the

responsibility."9Inotherwords, the teacherguides students through texts and models comprehension along theway. As students develop their understanding of the theme or response to the big idea or question, they are developing skills, building competence and confidence, and learning with and through texts.And as the students' skillsdevelop, teachersgraduallycede to them the responsibilityfor learn ing.

5. Teach literarydevices and readingcomprehensionstrat egies using texts thatare readable and meaningful. As we have noted, the content standards inEnglish language arts do not name or test students' knowledge of specific texts or authors. Instead, students are expected to learnhow to draw inferences from a text as a way of making sense of it.But students are not likely to have vast experience with inferringorwith appreciating and understanding how an author uses particular literarydevices to enrich a textor to contribute to a theme. Their lack of experience is com pounded when most instructionaltime isconsumed by ef fortsto get them to "get the story"of a few specific texts that theymay not find interestingor thatmay be too difficult for them. Fartoo often,we tryto teach to content standardsby requiringthat students readbookswith difficultvocabulary and concepts. The problem is thatcomprehension tools and literarydevices don't jumpout at the reader indifficult texts; students simply don't get good at reading comprehension, understanding literarydevices, literaryresponse,or writing by readinghard books. Studentsdon't learnhow towrite a persuasive textor how an omniscient point of view works from reading one difficult short story. Students do develop an understanding of and appreci ation forpersuasiveargumentsby readinga numberof texts, across genres and topics that they are accessible to them. And students do develop the ability to make inferences through repeated practice,

firstwith very obvious

examples

modeled by the teacher and thenwith increasingly com plex examples towhich they applywhat they have learned independently. While we don't know of studentswho got better at read ing or learned to understand the classics through a focus on whole-class reading,we do know a significant num ber of studentswho got better at reading and who started readingmore widely and frequently because their teach ers used a range of texts, organized the course around a theme or big idea, and then provided instruction as out lined in their state'scontent standards.We are on the same page as children's authorWalter Dean Myers, who writes, "It isonly when readershave the ability to fully absorb the material being read that the process becomes pleasurable The whole-class novel and a lifelong reader is-created."'0

assigned as independent readingwon't help students 'fully absorb thematerial."Helping that to happen takesa skilled teacherwho guides his or her students throughmultiple texts, genres, and standards. A common statementmade by some English language arts teachers is that students need to know Shakespeare or Walt Whitman before they graduate. Should this "knowl edge" be acquired at the expense of students' knowing how to readandwrite independentlyand purposefully for awide rangeof reasons?Traditional instruction inEnglish language arts actually limits the reading and writing stu dents can produce. Let'swork instead on expanding stu dents' understanding, interests,and thinking. The Outsiders," 1. Joanne S. Gillespie, Inside S. E. Hinton's Eng "Getting and Gustave Weltsek, lish Journal, pp. 44-48; "Using January 2006, to Deconstruct A Midsummer Process Drama Night's Dream," English 2005, pp. 75-81. Journal, September "'Just Plain Reading': A Survey ofWhat Ivey and Karen Broaddus, to Read inMiddle Students Want School Classrooms," Reading and JoWorthy, Megan vol. 36, 2001, pp. 350-77; Research Quarterly and Margo Turner, "What Johnny Likes to Read IsHard to Find Moorman,

2. Gay Makes

vol. 34, 1999, pp. 12-27. Reading Research Quarterly, for Struggling Readers: De L. Allington, What Really Matters and Research-Based Programs, 2nd ed. (New York: Pearson/Allyn 2006); and Gay Fisher, "Learning from What Ivey and Douglas Educational 2005, pp. 8-17. Work," Leadership, October

in School," 3. Richard signing Bacon, Doesn't

4. Gay Ivey and Douglas Fisher, Creating Literacy-Rich for Supervision lescents (Alexandria, Va.: Association 2006). Development, 5.

Ivey and Broaddus,

op.

cit.; and Worthy,

Moorman,

for Ado

Schools

and Curriculum

and Turner,

op.

cit. 6. Allan Wigfield tion for Reading of Educational

"Relations of Children's Motiva and John T. Guthrie, to the Amount and Breadth of Their Reading," Journal vol. 89, 1997, pp. 420-32. Psychology,

7. Ivey and Broaddus, op. cit. 8. Linda Baker and Allan Wigfield,

"Dimensions of Children's Motiva to Reading Activity and Reading for Reading and Their Relations vol. 34, 1999, pp. 452-77. Achievement," Reading Research Quarterly, for Develop "Effective Practices 9. Nell K. Duke and P. David Pearson, in Alan Farstrup and Jay Samuels, eds., ing Reading Comprehension," What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction, 3rd ed. (Newark, Del.: International 2002), p. 211. Reading Association, tion

10. Walter Journal,

Dean Myers, "Writing for the Uninspired K January 2005, p. 36.

Reader,"

English

2IPAL

"Yes, Idid write, 'Do not deface school property' on my desk. But she askedme to use 'oxymoron' in context!" MARCH 2007

497

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