The Pocket Instructor: Literature: 101 Exercises for the College Classroom

by Diana Fuss (Editor), William A. Gleason (Editor)

This is the first comprehensive collection of hands-on, active learning exercises for the college literature classroom, offering ideas and inspiration for new and veteran teachers alike.

These 101 surefire lesson plans present creative and interactive activities to get all your students talking and learning, from the first class to final review. Whether you are teaching majors or nonmajors, genres or periods, canonical or noncanonical literature, medieval verse or the graphic novel, this volume provides practical and flexible exercises for creating memorable learning experiences. Help students learn more and retain that knowledge longer by teaching them how to question, debate, annotate, imitate, write, draw, map, stage, or perform. These user-friendly exercises feature clear and concise step-by-step instructions, and each exercise is followed by helpful teaching tips and descriptions of the exercise in action. All encourage collaborative learning and many are adaptable to different class sizes or course levels.

A collection of successful approaches for teaching fiction, poetry, and drama and their historical, cultural, and literary contexts, this indispensable book showcases the tried and true alongside the fresh and innovative.


101 creative classroom exercises for teaching literature
Exercises contributed by experienced teachers at a wide range of colleges and universities
Step-by-step instructions and teaching tips for each exercise
Extensive introduction on the benefits of bringing active learning to the literature classroom
Cross-references for finding further exercises and to aid course planning
Index of literary authors, works, and related topics

Genres: Teaching, Education, Nonfiction, Professional Development

384 pages, Paperback

First published November 10, 2015

About the author

Diana Fuss, Louis W. Fairchild Class of ’24 Professor of English, has taught at Princeton since 1988, after receiving her PhD from Brown University in English and Semiotics. She has taught undergraduate courses on a range of topics in the areas of criticism and theory, 19th and 20th century American and British literature, narrative and poetry, and film and media. And she has taught more specialized graduate offerings on such subjects as Body Parts, Architectural Interiors, The Senses, Contemporary Theory, Freud’s Toolbox, American Elegy, Modern Death, Modern Love, and Keywords. She has also conducted the graduate pedagogy and dissertation seminars. In 2001 Fuss received the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, and she currently holds the University’s Cotsen Fellowship for Distinguished Research and Teaching.

Reviews

[K.P. Ambroziak · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a new college instructor with a doctorate in Literature, must be in want of teaching techniques.”

I have been teaching literature to college students for about two years and as much as I love the material I teach, I struggle with communicating the most important aspect of why we teach literature to all kinds of majors: critical thinking is not reserved for quantifiable subject matter alone. What I mean by this is that if a student can assess a work of literature, derive meaning from it, understand it on more than one level, tear it apart and put it back together again, he or she can productively contribute to any manner of occupation, and society in general.

This is where The Pocket Instructor comes in. This book is filled with tried and tested exercises for the college classroom that help an instructor connect with the active learner, and offer ideas to enhance student-centered pedagogy. As expressed in the introduction, “These days the work environment is frequently an extension of the learning environment. Our capacities for social interaction, group problem-solving, and intellectual play, along with a willingness to keep on learning, innovating, and implementing, have become core conditions for success in a rapidly evolving and increasingly networked global economy.”

So this handy little book (neither small, nor lean, mind you) groups the exercices by categories, such as those that initiate discussion, get at the elements of literature, and some that are staple exercises for any literature class, etc. Each exercise is explained in a few detailed paragraphs and then the instructor offers reflections on their own in-class experience, such as what worked and how students reacted, grew, what they learned, etc. College professors from all over the globe have contributed to the compilation, and the editors have done a fine job of listing specifics for each exercise (ie: genre, course level, student difficulty, teacher preparation, class size, semester time, writing component, close reading, and estimated time) so that you can choose the ones that best fit for your own course plan.

I am looking forward to trying a lot of these this coming semester, and have already noticed that they can easily be adapted to suit my own style and intention for each class session. This book truly feels like a mini-godsend for someone who might already do a fine job in the classroom but wants to get much better at teaching literature. And for any ABD or new Ph.D. on the market, I highly recommend this to complement the most-likely little bit of pedagogy you picked up in graduate seminars.

[Lisa Penninga · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book as inspiration for daily discussions, assessments, and outlets to discuss & analyze literature in the classroom. It was a teacher gem to see examples, lesson plans, reflections on each one, and the level of difficulty for each one. It is worth Owning because I will refer back to it quite often!

[Troy Zaher · Rating 4 out of 5]

While perhaps not the most insightful pedagogical book ever, it certainly is one of the most useful for new educators of literature! It’s essentially a list of activities that focus on different aspects of lit, that you can adapt into your classroom for various purposes. One could not build an entire curriculum off these alone, but they certainly could use these activities throughout their unit, as most of them are pretty fantastic.

My only wish is that there was a slightly more cohesive application of these. Perhaps an example of how the book would be practically used via a compilation of activities into a specific unit.

Read for my master’s Teaching of Literature course

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've put this in use, have found quite a bit of help, found short-cuts for teaching online, picked and chose, returned and adapted, and found numerous fun exercises throughout. I read this slowly at first, jumped around while teaching, and finished today as I sat in the spring sun. More lessons will come this semester, and I took notes today for review or new classroom approaches. This is a consistent, strong book. Work with it. Enjoy!

[David Rickert]

There were a ton of great ideas in here- it seemed like almost every one was something I want to try this year. A lot of them are geared towards advanced students (I teach high school seniors) but could be adapted to different grade levels. Definitely not just for college.

[Ginny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a PRACTICAL guide to getting students to engage with literature in the classroom. This is THE GUIDE to have if you are teaching literature for the first time as it has tons of thoroughly explained exercises you can steal and adapt and use immediately.

[Jennifer Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of great ideas, especially for high school seniors or early college students. I especially like how the book is arranged and appreciate the index, which includes specific novels for easy access to exercises. I have already used several ideas in my high school honors class, and they all worked very well.

[Vel Veeter]

This book was not the most useful book at all. For one, it’s just a list of activities. I think through the next school year I will flip through this and think about some specific moments in classrooms I am interested in, but a book like this maybe helps to explain the failure of college teaching for me. I taught college for a few years before anyone taught me how to teach. And I taught college for a few years before anyone taught me how to plan for teaching. This book is full of interesting ideas for activities, but if you use this as a replacement for understanding curriculum and curriculum, you’re filling time, but you’re not using that time as strongly as you possibly could be. Without clear goals at the course level and without clear goals unit by unit and without the right kinds of assessment and reflection, you end up with a course like a lot of my undergrad courses, talking about books and then a paper. The frustration of not having assignments that did anything than replicate the basic kinds of discussions we had in class or dealing with discussion questions and that’s all, well, those classes suck. I think this book should be used as a handbook to support a more rigorous system of planning. Then it could work to fill in those goals with relevant activities that students can use to develop learning.