NCTE Chalkface Series

Gendered Fictions
Gendered Fictions helps students explore how fiction and nonfiction texts construct gender by encouraging readers to take up "gendered" reading positions that support or challenge particular versions of masculinity and femininity. Students are invited to gain leverage on this process by using text-based discussions and activities to consider such factors as generic characters and intertextuality in order to assess the readings they (or others) produce, as well as to generate resistant or alternative readings when they so choose.

Investigating Texts:  Analyzing Fiction and Nonfiction in High School
Investigating Texts offers activities to help students explore what it means to behave like a reader, how ways of reading can change, and how a given text can be read in different ways. Activities set the stage for writing and discussion through prediction, chart building, comparative analysis, and manipulation of conventional fiction and nonfiction "ingredients." These activities are keyed to fiction and nonfiction texts reprinted in the book, including advertising and newspaper copy, an encyclopedia entry, and fiction.

Literary Terms:  A Practical Glossary
Literary Terms:  A Practical Glossary provides up-to-date definitions, drawing on recent developments in literary theory, and emphasizes the role of reading practices in the reproduction of literary meanings. Unlike other glossaries, it includes brief activities to help students develop a working knowledge of the concepts, with examples drawn from classic literary sources as well as from popular books, films, and television shows.

Reading Fictions:  Applying Literary Theory to Short Stories
Reading Fictions uses text-based discussion and activities to help students explore the notion that a text does not simply "have" a definitive meaning but invites readers to construct meanings from a range of possibilities. Each chapter begins with an overview of key concepts and moves on to stories—reprinted in the book.

Reading Hamlet
Reading Hamlet contains a wealth of ideas and practical activities for studying Shakespeare's play. The first section provides background material to help prepare your students to read Hamlet. Section two, "Reading the Play," features notes on each scene of the play, accompanied by activities and suggestions for further study. Additional sections focus on the construction of reading of character and invite different ways of reading Hamlet.

Reading Stories: Activities and Texts for Critical Readings
The five chapters in Reading Stories begin with what students know about stories and then move through crucial topics such as readers' expectations; authors' intentions; how and why readings change; reading in terms of gender, race, and class; and what is at stake in disagreements about readings. These and other issues are brought into sharp relief by consideration of 11 short stories—included in the book and selected for their appeal to students.

Studying Literature: New Approaches to Poetry and Fiction
Studying Literature provides a powerful way for high school teachers and students to explore the question of what makes a piece of writing "literature." The book includes a variety of literary texts, along with accessible discussions and stimulating exercises to help students investigate the values, assumptions, and practices that underlie literary activity. Individual and group activities are based on poems, short stories, and prose extracts.

Studying Poetry: Activities, Resources, and Texts
Studying Poetry uses text-based activities to help students approach poetry as a form of "discourse" that can be relevant to their daily lives. Activities are tied to more than 75 reprinted poems—including sonnets, limericks, haiku, free verse, and other forms. Activities move from the experience approach, including poetry performance, into exploration of poetry as discourse. Step-by-step guidelines for writing about poetry are accompanied by annotated examples of student writing and sample teacher comments.