As an approach to literary study, critical literacy is not a widespread practice in New Zealand secondary schools. This article draws on a major project on teaching literature in the multicultural classroom that take place over two years in 2008-2009. In it we report on a case study where a Year 13 English teacher designed and tested a novel…

This study examined the discourse of preservice teacher candidates in order to better identify those practices and experiences by which they shape their identity and conceptualize their role in teaching. The study's purpose was to find out (a) how secondary preservice teacher candidates conceptualize the practice of their teaching, (b) what…

Describes how reader response journals encourage students to interact with literary works. Presents 20 questions, based on David Bleich's response heuristic, which help guide students' responses. (MM)

Provides suggestions for using transactional theory, which stresses the importance of interacting with text, in teaching literature at the secondary level. Lists seven principles for teaching that are inherent in transactional theory. (SKC)

Argues that reading specialists' lack of success in persuading content area teachers to help their students read and study texts in social studies, science, and mathematics is a result of reading specialists' lack of careful thought about text structures. Discusses the text structures of textbooks in these content areas. (RS)

Discusses ways to teach modern plays and poetry, using a reader response approach that makes the works more accessible to students. (HTH)

Offers a method of using reader response theory that emphasizes the expectations about a text and how those expectations are fulfilled or deflated. Specifically, students read traditional fables, fairy tales, and parables, and compare them to contemporary works such as Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and Marquez's "The Very Old Man With Enormous Wings."…

Reviews "How Porcupines Make Love II," the sequel on teaching a response-centered literature curriculum. Finds it to be a lively, engaging, provocative text, one that includes workable hints for classroom practice. (MG)

Develops an Information Text Reading Activity (ITRA), a conceptual framework for presenting reading lessons that will engage students in reading informational text actively. Notes that the framework provides a basis for selecting and evaluating instructional activities and assists the teacher in moving students toward independence in learning. (RS)

Argues that literature instruction should enable readers to find the connections between their experience and the literary work. Explains how discussions can be guided to focus on students' reactions, perceptions, and associations with a text. (MM)

Provides a basis for understanding reading comprehension through the interactive components of metacognition (person, goal, task, and strategies). Suggests specific classroom techniques to encourage students to become self directed readers. (RS)

Probes William Wordsworth's relationship to the young reader. Concludes that although many young people today cannot have the direct, immediate experience of nature that overawed Wordsworth, they can, in a room where they sit down together and read a poem, "learn a contemplative solitude--and respond to [a] poem in their individual…

Explains how to teach F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" in three stages: before, during, and after a close look at the text and outlines the novel's narrative structure. (HOD)

Argues that the focus of content area instruction needs to include an emphasis on factors that motivate students to read their textbooks. Presents five strategies to link reader and text: using analogies; relating personal anecdotes; disrupting readers' expectations; challenging readers to resolve a paradox; and introducing novel and conflicting…

The persona Robert Frost communicated to most of his wide, diverse, and often non-academic audience was that of a rather isolated New England farmer, who--because of his limited experience with city folk and urban living--was untouched and thereby uncorrupted by the ways of the world. In teaching Frost, as in teaching any poet, some sort of…