In English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms, where acquisition of English is the ultimate goal, one of the main tasks for the teacher is to provide students with language input and activities that best aid them in their learning process. As different researchers have reported, including poetry-based activities in the EFL classroom is…

Examining how teachers help students respond to short fiction, this book presents 25 essays that look closely at "teachable" short stories by a diverse group of classic and contemporary writers. The approaches shared by the contributors move from readers' first personal connections to a story, through a growing facility with the…

Presents a point, counterpoint strategy which helps students build a repertoire of interpretive strategies that can be enlisted when dealing with complex short stories. Notes that the key to the strategy is that students begin with their personal responses and move toward more public and generalized interpretations. (RS)

Describes how a reader-response approach can help students construct a portfolio of readings that reflects their development as poetry readers. Describes using a reader-response journal, communal learning activities, and a portfolio to create a recursive process through which students develop a better understanding of how poetry works. Discusses…

Describes how a high school English teacher's belief that text contains a single, unchanging meaning evolved to an understanding that students create their own meanings through their own experiences. Discusses ways he tried (with mixed success) to provide students with the opportunity to bring their own experience to their reading. (SR)

Differences in readers' interpretations of a given text illustrate premises of the transactional or reader response theory of literature. The theory holds that: (1) meaning resides in the coming together of reader and text; (2) the reader affects the reading of the text and is affected by the text; and (3) there are potentially as many meanings to…

Discusses the Facts and Feelings Response Diary strategy for assisting middle school students in inclusive settings to connect both efferently and aesthetically with informational text. Notes that this activity stimulates students to focus their attention on important facts and details and to use their prior experiences, feelings, interests,…

Describes an assignment in writing documentation that turns the classroom into a laboratory for usability testing, giving students a clear sense of the reader responding to their text. (SR)

In this article, the author explains why he considers "Animal Dreams" by Barbara Kingsolver, "Ceremony" by Leslie Marmon Silko, and "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan as the most desirable books for students. He cites that several questions guide him in selecting these books. These questions include the following: (1) Why recommend certain texts to…

Shares the author's experiences as a third-grade teacher facing the dilemma of not having multiple copies of good literature available. Tells the story of how she developed effective instructional strategies for using the limited resources she was able to find. Describes how, despite less than ideal resources, children engaged in rich, thoughtful…

Argues that traditional textbook approaches to teaching literature alienate students from literature. Describes effective alternatives in which students learn interpretive strategies as they analyze and discuss their own important values in life, and then those of characters in a story; and learn to deal with irony. Outlines writing activities…

A survey of Alabama language arts teachers convinced one professor of English teacher education that there are good reasons for incorporating multicultural literature into the classroom, and that it seems especially appropriate for a reader response approach. Since multicultural literature may be as new for the teacher as for the student, teachers…

This paper articulates a framework for the development and integration of three instructional strategies--discussion, reading and learning from text guides, and writing--to teach secondary school students how to produce independent and productive responses to literature. An explanation of the need for and rationale behind an integrated approach is…

Discusses ways in which a teacher new to teaching ninth-grade English and new to the school district lured her "reluctant" readers into a true community of readers. Describes a trip to a local bookstore, building the reading community, writing in response to reading, graphic responses to reading, and oral responses to reading. (RS)

Provides a definition and description of the response process and a description of the teacher's role. Describes ERMAA (experiencing the literary work, responding, mapping and analyzing multiple responses, and affirming the inherent individuality of response), a one-week strategy designed to facilitate literary response in the classroom. (RS)