"It could happen to anybody", observed one nine-year-old child when her teacher read a book in class about refugees. Fiction provides the perfect conduit for the experiences of refugees so that young refugee students feel their experiences are validated, and their peers come to understand their situation. In this book, Julia Hope…

The author proposes that teachers of critical literacy must not only decenter texts as infallible authorities, but also decenter teachers as infallible (textual) authorities. She outlines problematic aspects of pursuing critical literacy as outcome, where there is heavy emphasis on having students parrot the teacher's viewpoint, and of pursuing…

The purpose of this study was to investigate what teachers in a Western Canadian province were doing when engaging their students with literature. Forty two teachers from Kindergarten through to Grade 12 were interviewed, which allowed us to get a broad perspective on the types of reader response activities that are being taught in the classroom…

In this qualitative study, the author examined the ways middle school literacy teachers responded to their boys' dialogue journals. The participants were 3 middle school literacy teachers and 19 middle school boys. The findings of this study indicated that the teachers took 4 roles (teacher as reader, teacher as responder, teacher as facilitator,…

Do novice teachers effectively use teaching strategies they learn in a preservice course? This study examines how five novice intermediate (Grades 7-10) English language arts teachers implemented reader response journals, an instructional activity they learned about in their preservice English methods course. During interviews, they shared the…

Suggests an approach to literature (derived from post-structuralism and deconstructionism) which goes beyond the concept of "teacher as authority," without totally abandoning form or structure. Demonstrates this approach in a discussion of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" and Philip Larkin's poem "High…

States that the teacher's ultimate responsibility is to assist individuals to continue to appreciate Shakespeare's plays in later life. Discusses (1) the play as a live process, (2) methods of play appreciation, and (3) the play experience as an integrated whole. (EL)

Describes the characteristics of an alternative writing workshop in which the author controls the discussion. Discusses the respective roles of the writer, the readers, and the teacher in such a workshop. (HTH)

As teachers experiment with the many related types of response-centered approaches (including whole language and literature-based instruction), many are uncertain about the place of instruction in these paradigms and their role in it. For pedagogical purposes, it is unproductive to conceptualize the teaching and learning of reasoning in general…

Reveals four different categories of teacher-student books conferences. Reports findings of a study of four children's book conferences over a year that shows the teacher preferring different foci with different students. (FL)

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…

Reading workshop employs teaching methods to accomplish the goals of preparing self-disciplined readers who read and write by choice, motivating students to read and write because of a genuine interest, and developing students who learn to read and write by doing. Reading Workshop came into existence as a reaction to the disproportionate amount of…

Examines the tasks of authors, of readers, and of teachers in assisting readers to make use of prior information as they read. (FL)

Describes how a tenth-grade English teacher changed her role from that of a leader always on center stage to that of a prober, guide, problem poser, resource person, and strategist. Advises teachers to help students find, shape, and revise their own questions and then explore and evaluate responses to these questions. (RS)

Offering an alternative to traditional language arts methods textbooks, this collection of 20 essays by master teachers is grouped into 4 main sections. Following an introduction, essays in the book are: (1) "Walter" (Vivian Gussin Paley); (2) "Children Become Writers: A Conversation with Two Teachers" (Cyndy Hoffman and Carol…