Fan of Choice

Andrea Reichenberger contributed today's thinking.

Those who know me well know that I am not a huge fan of the whole class novel being used in the English/Language arts classroom--at any level. We strive to develop a love of literacy in our students by offering choice at the younger grade levels. Why do we want to take those choices away in the upper grades?

Much has changed in what we know about literacy instruction, but much has also changed with the students who walk into our classrooms everyday. Therefore, we need to rethink our practices.  I don’t believe that we MUST teach what may be considered a classic or the canonized literature that is so often a part of many high school curriculums. Don’t get me wrong.  I LOVE Pride and Prejudice, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Crucible, Catcher in the Rye and every Shakespearean comedy I’ve ever seen performed. If I really thought about why I loved these particular classics though, it was because I had a specific connection with each one. Because I love them, I have read them several times over and dug deeper with each read because I WANTED to and because it was my choice.  But I HATED (loathed might even be a better word) The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment--no matter how passionate my English teacher was. I didn’t care to read them, so I bought the Cliff Notes. (We didn’t have the Internet to access SPARK notes in the “old days.”)  I think it is also fair to say that my opinion of what constitutes a “classic” may differ from that of a teacher who is significantly older or younger than me. A novel that was released within the last 10 years MIGHT just be considered a classic. This could be true of many titles by authors like Gary Soto, Jacqueline Woodson and Chris Crutcher just to name a few.

When discussing curriculum, coming to agreements about titles can become a means of contention among teacher teams.  But these agreements shouldn’t be about us, they should be centered around our students. Who are those kids sitting in our classrooms? What choices can we offer that they will be able to connect to?  We have to think about those choices, and although many classics contain universal themes, we also need to think about whose perspective we are analyzing and why. My suggestion is to shift the conversation--instead of talking about titles,we should discuss how to incorporate deeper themes, how to address text complexity and accessibility, and how to create authenticity.

Before I begin to receive hate email, I should clarify that I do believe that teaching a whole class novel can be done--if it is done well.  Unfortunately, rarely have I witnessed a novel being taught really WELL except when used as a mentor or anchor text.  When used in this capacity, it is much more purposeful. I’ve seen too little planning and too many fill-in-the-blank worksheets.  I’ve seen too many unit tests on a novel with a wide array of low level recall questions that do not push the students’ thinking.  I’ve seen too many teachers having discussions where they are doing all of the talking and asking questions of the students in a manner I refer to as the “guess what I’m thinking” game. I’ve also seen too much reading with no writing and too much writing with no reading. If the whole class novel is going to be used, I believe that there needs to be significant instructional coaching and learning in order to be implemented in a way students can appreciate, embrace, and truly learn from.

We need our students reading and writing more, not less. Whole class novels can pull us away from that goal if we aren't careful. One of my favorite videos was created by Penny Kittle with her students in 2011.  I meant to make my own when I asked some of my former students the same questions. You shouldn’t be shocked that they had the same answers and responses.  

When teachers are designing units, they should not be designing a (insert any novel title here) unit. Units should be based around essential questions or universal themes in literature. So, in a sense, units shouldn’t be units---they should be more focused on inquiry.

Units should be designed in a way that enables reading, writing, speaking, and language use to work together hand in hand. We shouldn’t separate these skills but rather think about how they can be integrated together.

We should be designing units that offer authentic literacy instruction with real-world purposes that are relevant to all of our students. (I would also argue that this should happen in all content areas.) We should teach with the standards in mind and make sure we understand them, but not necessarily use them as our starting point.

Yes, we need to find powerful literature to incorporate into our units, but we also have to incorporate a wide variety of text types to help support our essential questions that will build students’ skills in different venues. This may include choosing video clips (but not entire movies), speeches, poems, songs, short stories, informational texts, and even picture books.

Lastly, we need to offer choice. In Regie Routman’s book, Read, Write, Lead, she cites the research of  Peter Johnston and Gay Ivey and well-known teacher researchers/practitioners including Nancy Atwell, Donalyn Miller, Kelly Gallagher, Penny Kittle, Donald Graves, and Lucy Calkins.  Choice is often the game-changer for elementary, middle school and high school students who are not thriving as readers and writers. Choice increases student engagement.  Student engagement is something I am a HUGE fan of!