On 10/18/09, Helen wrote:
> I am wondering how you approach novel studies.
>
> My grade 10 students have started a novel and I have a whole
> range of reading abilities - some students I had to get them
> to promise me they wouldnt read the entire book the first
> weekend!
>
> My question to you is do you:
>
> A - have them read the novel then do all of your activities,
> assignments, projects, questions when they are done reading?
>
> or
>
> B - Have assignments along the way? hoping that those who
> are slower readers get caught up and the quick readers will
> be able to remember what they have already read....
>
> Just wondering what you do.

=========================================================

Before I begin any novel, I pursue a regimen of short
stories, teaching the same approach - formal criticism - as
will be used in teaching a novel.

NOTHING is taught without first assuring myself that the
students have read the carefully the material that is to be
discussed in class. To this end, assigned readings are
brief - the short story, or one or two chapters of a novel -
and the class is quizzed with 5-minute matching tests with 10
items on one side and 13 on the other, before any discussion
begins.

This done, and with my own full knowledge of the "shape"
of the story or novel, I begin questioning individual
students about the *story of the main character*: what is
he/she like at the beginning of the story and what at the
end; then the "middle" is filled in with events that step
along that change.

Dealing with a novel, I question the class(who may have
read only the first or second chapters) about events in the
first few pages that *I* know are building-blocks for the
larger issues of the work. (This may have to begin with a
close reading of the material in class - something perhaps
useful when dealing with slow-readers and particularly
helpful when studying plays by Shakespeare).

This is, of course, slow-going, but it works: questions
posed to *individual* students and their answers forming the
substance of questions to other *individual* students - this
procedure *used by a teacher who knows what he/she wants the
students to "discover"* engages the most recalcitrant mind,
because *every* student wants to give his opinion about
anything. (Do NOT throw questions out to the whole class,
pinpoint individual students with the first and following
questions, building your question to the next student on the
answer given by the last student.)

See an example of this procedure at this site:

http://teachers.net/gazette/FEB03/swilley.html

Note that the aim of such a procedure is to *produce the
mind of teacher thinking rationally and carefully about the
subject* in the minds of the students. Every work examined
becomes an exercise to that end. The aim is not finally to
learn this story or that novel, but to learn how to judge
works of literature using the teacher's critical principles,
and the advantages and limitations of those principles.

L. Swilley

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