The Literature Toolbox: Practical Strategies for Exploring Texts

By Glen Pearsall

'The study of English introduces a student to other voices and other lives ... and in doing so, helps them find their own voice.'

Whether you are planning to study a new text, looking for a fresh approach to teach an old favourite or simply seeking strategies to provide more variety in your teaching, this is an invaluable guide for all Eng

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amba Press
• Release date: Apr 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9781923116528

Glen Pearsall

Glen Pearsall was a teacher at Eltham High School and a board member of the Curriculum Assessment Authority in Victoria, Australia. Pearsall works throughout Australia as an educational consultant, specializing in feedback and assessment, workload reduction for teachers, and instructional practice. He has a particular interest in the work of graduate and preservice teachers and has worked as a research fellow and tutorial leader at the Centre for Youth Research, University of Melbourne, Australia. He is a Cambridge Education associate and a master class presenter for TTA and has a long association with the Teacher Learning Network and a wide range of teacher unions. He is the best-selling author of several widely used teacher books.

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THE

LITERATURE

TOOLBOX

Practical Strategies for Exploring Texts

Glen Pearsall

To my Mum whose love of reading and to my Dad whose struggle with it inspired me to be an English teacher...

© Glen Pearsall 2024

First published in 2014 by TLN Press

Republished in 2020 by Hawker Brownlow Education

This edition published in 2024 by Amba Press

Editor: Natasha Harris

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Amba Press

Melbourne, Australia

www.ambapress.com.au

ISBN: 9781923116511 (pbk)

ISBN: 9781923116528 (ebk)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Creating Engaged Readers

Encountering Text

Taking Note

Conducting Classroom Discussions

Distant Reading

Appendix: Code Words

Chapter Two: Working Faster, Reading Deeper

Foundation Knowledge

Reading Deeper

Developing Understanding

Chapter Three: Getting it in Writing

Refining Essay Technique

Practising Prose

About the Author

References

Index

Introduction

The most successful English students demonstrate a ‘fullness of response’.

They read closely, immersing themselves in the text. They grant characters the complexity of their own motivations. Successful English students wrestle with meaning. They tease out tensions and contradictions in a text, constantly revisiting and revising their views. Successful English students don’t just do the work. They learn and grow from it.

Expert teachers understand that this is a slow process. They remember that first readings can be bewildering or enchanting and leave space in their curriculum for the tentative process of reading and re-reading. They then help their students connect this private experience to the wider world. Expert teachers introduce students to other voices and other lives ... and in doing so, help students find their own voices.

Anyone who has taught Elizabethan drama to a class of distracted teenagers knows that this can be challenging work. Just helping students to learn to read—or, once they can read, read the book—can be an enormous task. But it is a deeply rewarding one.

This text offers teachers practical, classroom-tested techniques for realising these challenging goals. It is organised into three chapters:

Chapter 1 argues that teaching students to write well about literature is often a matter of teaching students to read well.

Chapter 2 suggests that if we are to do this effectively we need strategies for reducing the amount of time devoted to teaching foundation knowledge so we can use this additional class time to elicit more sophisticated readings.

Chapter 3 offers strategies for improving specific aspects of student writing about literature.

This focus on practising specific skills is not to be confused with more formulaic approaches to teaching English classes. In The Literature Toolbox, I won’t explore pro-forma essay structures or advocate any single instructional strategy as the sole way to approach a problem. Rather than teaching students to copy narrow recipes for success, I believe we must show students that achievement involves steadily building up a bank of skills and strategies with which to examine and respond to literature in their own voices. Students need to learn that a successful response is not the result of natural flair, but something that is made. Excellence can be built.

Literature, then, is not something we learn: it is something we do.

Expert teachers introduce students to other voices and other lives ... and in doing so, help students find their own voices.

Chapter 1:

Creating Engaged Readers

Exploring Text and Fostering Engagement

Great writing is a product of great reading. To improve our students’ writing about literature we must focus primarily on teaching students how to become better readers. Indeed, much of the discussion about the strengths and limitations of student writing should actually refer to the skills and knowledge that can best be developed through effective classroom reading.

If we want our students to produce cohesive and fluent written responses, we must first teach them to become literate readers. Critical reading is a complex, high-order skill, but it is possible to identify the traits that are most closely associated with its development. These traits are often grouped under the label ‘performative literacy’ (Blau, 2003). Highly accomplished readers:

are capable of sustained, focused attention and demonstrate a willingness to suspend closure

have a capacity for intellectual risk taking and are prepared to take chances and make mistakes

understand knowledge as conditional and, while they are ready to ‘make a case’ for their point of view, they can also change their mind

demonstrate metacognition, monitoring the extent of their learning in an ongoing way.

The first two chapters of this resource explore strategies for creating this kind of open, reflective approach to reading in our English classes. In this first chapter we consider simple strategies for fostering engagement in readers. We discuss techniques for teaching young people to observe closely, draw inferences and then carefully record their insights. We explore strategies for finding pathways into difficult or dry material and for making use of prior knowledge and learning. We offer techniques for creating a classroom culture where students readily identify and discuss the limits of their understanding.

Close, engaged reading is central to effective student practice. Without this basic engagement with text, all other elements of an English teacher’s craft are moot. If students won’t read the book or report honestly about the limits of their knowledge, then the best delivered lesson in the world is just filler between recess and lunchtime.

Encountering Text

The best activities for unpacking a new text not only help students develop better textual knowledge but also signal the kind of approaches required to make the most of that knowledge.

These signals are crucial. Students who underperform in English often do so because, at a fundamental level, they misunderstand what is required of them. They paraphrase, for instance, instead of analysing texts. They identify quotes without weighing their meaning or significance. They think that their goal is immediate mastery rather than persistent investigation. In these instances, students aren’t so much missing their target as aiming at the wrong thing.

Students aren’t so much missing their target as aiming at the wrong thing.

This misdirection is relatively easy to address. Subtle adjustments of focus within our class practice can substantially change our students’ perception of what is required of them when studying literature. The activities featured here do just this. They not only guide the students’ first readings and initial analysis but provide a frame through which to view the rest of their English text studies.

Unpacking a Sentence

Many comprehension and analysis activities in English textbooks presume that students are able to draw inference from a text. However, English teachers can’t presume that students have learned this skill: we must explicitly teach it. A good way to embed this skill in a student’s approach is to practise drawing inferences one sentence at a time.

This activity works best if you start with sentences with which the class is unfamiliar. Working with unfamiliar sentences seems to help students concentrate on closely examining the text for clues rather than basing their inquiries on their own prior knowledge.

Here are some examples that have been used to produce engaged discussions in senior English classes:

In the afternoon, it was the habit of Miss Jane Marple to unfold her second newspaper. (Agatha Christie)

Ted watched the orchestra through stupid tears. (James Woods)

People’s lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable—deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum. (Alice Munro)

It was 1955 and we were driving from Florida to Utah, to get