Describes a study that showed how and what two classes of middle-track 10th graders wrote and learned when their teacher employed reader-based and teacher-centered instructional tasks for discussing and writing about a short story. Finds that reader-based tasks for reading and writing may enable teachers to rethink literature instruction in…

Uses stimulated recall to elicit a retrospective account from two alternative school students who choreographed a dance to depict their understanding of the relationship between the two central characters in a short story. Suggests that these students' account illustrates the way in which reader, text, and context participate in a complex…

Shares personal and profound experiences that permitted the emergence of a method of response to literature, circles of meaning, including excerpts of a master's thesis case study of a student making meaning of short stories using the method. Notes some of the learnings that this experience brought into the author's work with education students.…

Discusses students' responses to SIXTEEN: SHORT STORIES BY OUTSTANDING WRITERS FOR YOUNG ADULTS (edited by Donald R. Gallo), a collection of stories thematically grouped in a format based on a response-centered approach to literature. (MM)

Describes a study that investigated how young readers respond to text when a teacher uses an anticipation exercise within the framework of a small or large group discussion. The dynamics operating in classroom situations that use anticipation in small or large group contexts are observed and described. (FL)

Examines the role of readers' subjectivity or personal responses in story interpretation, specifically in the formation of thematic generalizations. (MG)

To assess the effects of textual variation on students' preferred patterns of literary response, 166 college students were asked to read two poems and two short stories. The findings provided support for the notion that students' preferred patterns of response are strongly influenced by the nature of the texts they read. (HOD)

Answers the question of whether fiction can mean anything you want it to. Offers suggestions to help students use their personal experiences to make sense out of Kafka's "A Hunger Artist." (EL)

Discusses Margaret Atwood's "provocative and funny" short story "Rape Fantasies," and describes how, when teaching this story the author encourages students to sympathize with Estelle (the narrator) before they judge her (instead of rushing to achieve closure and begin interpretation). (SR)

Analyzes Gabriel Garcia Marquez'"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" while calling attention to aspects of a critical approach that is universal in its grasp. Proposes that it is the reader who has to allow the text to engage the reader's critical participation. (PM)

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)

Presents critical interpretations of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" from four points of view: the feminist reading; the reader response reading; a realistic reading; and a historic reading. Outlines classroom activities and follow up activities to use along with the four interpretations. (PM)

This article argues that discussions of folktales would be more meaningful if their brief existence as "ideal tales" in a narrative contract could be accepted. The article focuses on the concept of a folktale as an object of experience and of study, by a sustained discussion and charting of the tortuous ways by which so-called folktales…

Describes three instructional guides designed to raise students' thinking about short stories beyond factual recall to interpretation, application, synthesis, and evaluation of material, and to foster positive affective responses as concomitant reading behaviors. (RS)

Determines if students' aesthetic involvement would be influenced by the ethnicity of the student or the culture portrayed in short stories. Finds that the level of aesthetic involvement was not significantly influenced by the ethnicity of the student or culture portrayed in the story. Supports the integration of multicultural literature into the…