Presents three assignment sequences--covering both canonical and noncanonical stories, mini-anthologies, and novels--that encourage secondary school students to think critically about the concept of literature. Notes that students can learn to analyze literature critically by comparing both canonical and noncanonical texts. (MM)

Reviews several theoretical perspectives and presents data pertinent to what makes a story likable. Examines the contribution of two story characteristics to adults' and elementary students' ratings of story liking and storyhood: the importance of the goal the protagonist pursues and the difficulty of attaining that goal. (JAD)

Discusses a teacher's difficulties in using reader response approaches to engage her students at an urban alternative high school. Examines their resistances to discussion and personal response. Offers a few approaches the teacher has been trying, with some success, to overcome these resistances. (TB)

Uses the interpretative location of the author's reading of Michael Ondaatje's poem "Light" and the author's writing of his own poem "Three Women Pictured" as a way of organizing a discussion of three ideas that illuminate the complexity of shared reading and response in schools. (TB)

Focuses attention on the kinds of literature that are helpful in fostering thoughtful reflection in special education graduate courses. Discusses several specific examples, such as Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." (PA)

Presents four teaching suggestions: a thinking twist on the multiple-choice question; building active readers through debate; two-column response to literature; and motivating a soldier to form a reading habit. (SR)

Analyzes, from a reader-response perspective, children's free responses to story characters in nontraditional roles. Investigates the relationship of gender for these responses. Finds that only 20-30 percent of the responses expressed opinions regarding appropriateness of nontraditional gender roles and that the most common response type was…

Examines effect of teaching approaches on students' responses to three picture books. Finds that students in a "literary analysis" group focused on identification of literary elements; students in a "literary experience" group indicated more involvement in the story world; and students who did not discuss the stories were more…

Relates how student-made questions inspired at-risk students to get involved with an assigned text. States that the students became engaged in literature and no longer needed the teacher to pose questions or set agendas. (PRA)

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)

Investigates the importance of time in literacy acquisition of second graders. Finds that the children wrestled with such complex issues as chronology in dialog, time/space relationships, and the way their culture defines time as they try to show the dimension of time on a page or work to understand the time element in the books they read. (RS)

Uses stimulated recall to elicit a retrospective account from a student following his production of an artistic text representing his view of the relationship of two central characters in a short story. Analyzes the student's process of composition. Suggests that nonlinguistic texts can help students construct meanings. (HB)

Presents a classroom discussion episode broken into narrative segments with the teacher's reflective commentary on each. Uses this narrative to help understand the nature of student response to literature and the demands that response-centered teaching makes on teachers. (SR)

Discusses critical aspects of literary literature-based classrooms, including the following: reading literature is a form of play; readers respond to their reading; everything shared is accepted as honest and meaningful; teachers push for rigor in their children's readings; children are provided with opportunities to read and respond; children…

Investigates whether responses to literature of South African adolescents from three subcultures varied with reference to values inherent in a text and whether these differences might be attributed to differences in the value systems of the respondent's subcultures. Confirms these expectations. (SR)