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 |  | What makes literature special? We read literature to understand human experience across time and place. Although middle school and high school students may be familiar with literary genres such as poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama, many of them do not enjoy or fully understand what they read because they haven't yet learned strategies for reading a variety of literary texts. What is there to learn about, they may think, beyond identifying plot, setting, characters, and theme? Readers need strategies that help them read not only the words on the page but also read between and beyond the lines. They need to know the specialized language of literary texts. Figurative language, style, irony, point of view, and theme take on particular meanings when employed in literary genres. Understanding literary theories helps readers increase their perspectives and enlarge interpretive abilities. Teachers can and must help secondary school students get the most out of literary texts. |
Teaching Strategies
Beyond the Yellow Highlighter: Teaching Annotation Skills to Improve Reading Comprehension
|  Annotating a text is a powerful strategy to comprehend difficult material and encourage active reading. High school teacher Carol Porter-O'Donnell provides several activities and tools to help students learn to purposefully mark up what they read.
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Teaching Plot Structure through Short Stories
| There's more to plot than identifying the series of events in a story. After viewing a PowerPoint presentation on plot structure, students identify the significant events that shape the structure of the familiar fairy tale, "Jack and the Beanstalk," using an online graphic organizer. Students then read short stories as a class, in small groups, and then individually, analyzing the plot of three of them using an online graphic organizer to diagram the structures.
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Spend a Day in My Shoes: Exploring the Role of Perspective in Narrative
| In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus explains to Scout that "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it" (36). Make this advice more literal by inviting students to imagine spending a day in someone else's shoes. While this lesson uses the quotation as a springboard and ties to discussions of the novel, it can be completed even if students are not currently reading the book.
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Name That Chapter! Discussing Summary and Interpretation Using Chapter Titles
| Students name chapters in novels that they are reading, creating a cumulative list for the novel as they proceed. Sample titles are discussed and debated before the class settles on a choice. In the process, students actively explore reading comprehension, summary, paraphrase, accuracy, and connotation.
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Reader Response in Hypertext: Making Personal Connections to Literature
| Students choose four quotations to inspire personal responses to a novel that they have read. Students then write a narrative of place, a character sketch, an extended metaphor poem and a persuasive essay then link all four texts to the quotations. This lesson is used with novels that contain a strong sense of place, that focus on closeness of characters, and that are metaphorical in character, such as A River Runs Through It, Montana 1948, or The Bean Trees.
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Professional Readings
Bold Books for Innovative Teaching: Connecting Reluctant and Struggling Readers with Books
| What's going on with the students who can't find a book and can't articulate what is interesting to them? Kylene Beers capably guides you through this territory and provides a brief interest checklist to use with students, as well as a short list of proven titles. From May 2004 English Journal.
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"Mirror, Mirror on the Wall": Readers' Reflections on Literature through Literary Theories
| Seeking to enhance students' experiences with literature, Joanne Golden and Donna Canan collaborated to implement the study of literary theories in two sophomore English classes. Through analyzing a fairy tale, a short story, and a novel, high school students developed divergent and critical thinking about literature.
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Research Matters: Reading Apprenticeship
| The invisible processes involved in comprehending academic texts are made visible to the teacher and students in Reading Apprenticeship classrooms, resulting in positive gains in reading development. Features of the program and its implications for classrooms are featured in this May 2004 English Journal article.
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How can this text be read?
|  Reader-oriented developments in literacy theory and powerful models of learning enabled researchers Smagorinsky, Smith and Marshall to develop deep portraits of the complex relationships between readers' thinking and their discussion of literary texts. Read the introduction to their report, The Language of Interpretation.
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Portfolios in Literature Courses: A Case Study
| Jeff Sommers explores the use of portfolio assessment in the literature classroom and finds that portfolios help students use writing to engage literary texts in multiple and productive ways. He offer opportunities to examine the effects of the reading process over the course of the writing pieces and argues for portfolios that focus on a single literary work.
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Related Resources
NCTE Consultants Specializing in Teaching Literary Texts
|  Invite an NCTE consultant to your school to present to your secondary level staff engaging and effective strategies to help improve their students' understanding and interpretations of literary texts.
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English Journal on the Web
|  EJ on the Web provides a central location for all web links featured in NCTE’s journal for secondary educators, English Journal. The site includes additional resources for teacher and student use.
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New York Regents Exam Controversy
| In June 2002, NCTE joined forces with 13 other organizations to protest the use of altered literary passages on the New York Regents Exam in English.
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Recommended Texts on Reading Literary Texts
|  Need a place to learn more? NCTE leaders offer a "best of the best" list of professional books.
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NCTE Chalkface Series
|  Originally published in Australia, the eight books in this series have been contextualized for a North American audience. Focusing on specific texts and skillfully interweaving theory and practice, these contemporary, student-friendly books are a valuable resource that teachers and students can use together.
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Contribute Resources To This Collection
| This collection was compiled by NCTE leaders and staff, Jeff Golub, Louann Reid, Pat Schulze, and Kathy Egawa. You are invited to submit suggestions for the collection or to share your needs in relation to this topic.
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