This essay is just one story in the ongoing conversation of how to approach teaching indigenous literatures in colonial educational institutions. Through sharing her experiences in teaching Richard Van Camp's "The Lesser Blessed," the author hopes to reveal the power of this particular text and the way its effects on students who…

This article considers the role of reader characteristics in processing and learning from informational text, as revealed in think-aloud research. A theoretical framework for relevant aspects of readers' processing and products was developed. These relevant aspects included three attentional foci for processing (comprehension, monitoring, and…

In 1991, David Macaulay was awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal for his picturebook, "Black and White" (1990). He believed the Caldecott committee's choice communicated many messages to readers of all ages: "that it is essential to see, not merely to look; that words and pictures can support each other; that it isn't necessary to think in a…

While visiting the classroom of an English teacher on campus, the author noticed a large number of literature textbooks that were being replaced with a newer edition. In this article, she describes a project, which was inspired by these discarded literature textbooks, designed to introduce students to an art form based on ideas rather than…

High school teacher Melissa Troise challenges students to recognize the relationships that exist between literary theories, such as Marxism, feminism, and postcolonialism, and urges students to expand their contexts for reading texts by accessing and combining theories. Troise believes theory provides students with the potential to better…

Although, by the time of her death, Louise Rosenblatt was highly respected in the fields of composition and reading theory, she did not enjoy the same status among literary theorists. In this article, the author argues that Rosenblatt should be taken seriously as a literary theorist. The author shares her views on Rosenblatt's "Literature as…

Freire told his audience at a seminar at the University of Massachusetts, "You need to read knee-deep in texts, for deeper than surface meanings, and you need to know the words to be able to do it" (quoted in Cleary, 2003). In a children's literature class, fifteen teachers and I traveled along a path that moved us toward reading…

Discusses how "close" reading led to "closed" reading (a work's one true meaning is available only to a select few). Advocates "open" reading, returning authority over the text to students. Espouses the detective story as an open text which has been "closed" by the author but which resists closure. (SR)

Sequels are written by the authors due to some financial reasons and sold by the publishers because readers request them. The readers admire the characters mentioned in the sequels, an attachment is developed for these characters and hence a curiosity is developed to know more about them.

Assuming that readers' emotional responses can enhance readers' metacognitive experiences and inform literary analysis, this study of 11th-grade poetry readers features instruction that models both cognitive and affective reading processes. The author: (1) Presents a case for more explicit attention to emotion in language arts classrooms; (2)…

This interpretive study proposes a framework with which to explore the ethical significance of classroom-based literacy practices. Overly narrow views of literature as a source of role models or moral precepts take insufficient account of the complexity of text and experience. Through analyses of telling examples from student writing and…

The reading of science-related, historical nonfiction alone does not necessarily lead students to make personal connections to science or understand science as a human endeavor interdependent with culture, society, and history. Teachers must structure students' reading to ensure that they consider specific aspects of science while reading and…

Recently, transactional reader response theory has been criticized for providing an inadequate theoretical guide for the study of multicultural literature. Some scholars argue that Rosenblatt assumes the reader and her response to literature are ideologically innocent and the continuum of aesthetic and efferent stance does not encompass critical…

Claims that Tom is a character eminently suited to the multiplicity and subjectivity arguments of reader response criticism (RRC), that meaning is a relation between an author, a text, and a reader, not an object, as New Criticism held, and not a procedure, as RRC assumes. (RAE)

Reiterates some of the major tenets of reader-response theory. Describes the "writerly" text as a source of activity rather than of meaning, and examines Gary Paulsen's "The Winter Room" as an example of the active writerly text. (SR)