Workshopping the Canon

by Mary E. Styslinger

Workshopping the Canon introduces practicing and preservice English language arts teachers to a process for planning and teaching the most frequently taught texts in middle and secondary classrooms using a workshop approach. Demonstrating how to partner classic texts with a variety of high-interest genres within a reading and writing workshop structure, Mary E. Styslinger aligns the teaching of literature with what we have come to recognize as best practices in the teaching of literacy. Guided by a multitude of teacher voices, student examples, and useful ideas, workshopping teachers explore a unit focus and its essential questions through a variety of reading workshop structures, including read-alouds, independent reading, shared reading, close reading, response engagements, Socratic circles, book clubs, and mini-lessons (e.g., how-to, reading, literary, craft, vocabulary, and critical), as well as writing workshop structures comprising mentor texts, writing plans, mini-lessons, independent writing, conferences, writing circles, and publishing. This book is for every teacher who has struggled to make beloved classic texts relevant to today's young readers.

Genres: Teaching, Education, Professional Development, Nonfiction

Paperback

Published November 1, 2017

Reviews

[Tami · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a 3.5. Out of fairness, my rating is based on what I was hoping to find in the book, but wasn’t there. I was looking for a more explicit model of workshop as it relates to the canon. For me, it was a revisit of things I already know.
Not explicit enough in the places I needed to help my preservice teachers, better for teachers with some practice I think.

I do like the unit focus threaded in the book since it makes the canon texts more about an essential question and reading skills/strategies and connections to other texts vs old ideas of teaching a book and testing “the story”. Appendices are nice- I especially am fond of the text pairing/supplemental texts. Mini-lesson chapter also helpful for teachers.

NCTE reads book from this summer. If you’re a member, you should check out some of the great ideas/ discussion.

Might use this as a possible inquiry text for my course, but not quite right for one of the main books to meet the desired outcomes.

[Marissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

For an instruction on how to set up high school ELA classes as a reading workshop this is a fine resource. But it could have used more visuals, better representation of the ideas presented. And it needed to be a bit more engaging instead of the slog it was.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

NCTE summer read, probably intended for an audience of pre-service or teachers in their first few years in the classroom. The concept of "workshopping the canon" is amazing and it is worth having this book for the Appendices. However, there isn't much new here in terms of pedagogy or theory. Styslinger draws heavily from the always-relevant L. Rosenblatt, as well as from Beers and Probst. So for teachers familiar with their works, this book will feel more like of a summary of tried and true reading strategies (Socratic Seminars, Sketch to Stretch, dialectical journals, etc) arranged in a loose "workshopping" format (although the nuts and bolts of workshopping aren't explained in detail in the way Atwell did so many years ago for writing - just a few very short case studies at the end of the book).

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

The text pairing/appendices are awesome, but otherwise a lot of this just didn’t feel particularly new or helpful. I found myself skimming large chunks of the book—sometimes even a whole chapter. It was fine, but there’s nothing really new or revolutionary here.

[Robert Greenberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Combined with the previously read No More Fake Reading, I have a greater appreciation for finding ways to match contemporary works with the classics we're required to teach.

Mary E. Styslinger's book walks you through the various steps of workshopping a canonical text including Engaging Reader Response, Ways to Talk, Mini-Lessons, Writing, and so on. There might be a little too much emphasis on outside reading (considering students have six or more other classes) and reading aloud in class, this has good insights into keeping things mixed up and relevant.

There are good appendixes with resources and suggested pairings for many of the most-often taught works, mixing them with articles, videos, graphic novels, poems, etc.

All that is really missing are links to online resources for some of the things mentioned here and considering this is published by the CTE, that's disappointing.

[Jon Den Houter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I write this review primarily to process and help me remember what I read.

Chapter 1: Why and How to Workshop
Workshops "enable teachers to interweave other genres as a means of providing students with more accessible text and diverse cultural representations, bridging the gap between out-of-school and in-school reading" (3) and "helping students make connections more easily between a core text and their lives" (10).

Looking back on her early teaching career, she asks herself if her students really read the canonical texts she assigned--Macbeth, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text, Of Mice and Men, The Scarlet Letter, etc. "Did I, with the very best of intentions, foster a classroom environment that provided students with all of the information necessary to write essays, create projects, and take tests without ever having to make meaning of or transact with the text?" (4). A reading workshop can remedy this problem; moreover, "when we provide students with choice and foster responsive classroom environments with connections to real-life experiences, we help students stay engaged... and increase [students'] reading comprehension" (5).

"When we workshop the canon, rather than planning around a single text like Beowolf, we select a unit focus that allows for multiple texts, voices, ideas, and perspectives to be explored within an array of reading and writing workshop structures. [As I come up with a unit focus], rather than asking myself what bits and pieces students will learn about Beowolf, I consider how I will facilitate students' transactions with Beowolf through reading and writing workshop structures and strategies connected to a larger unit focus, such as heroes” (10).

"Commonly tied to a unit focus are essential questions, which are questions that relate to a unit focus and can be used to connect to other genres as well. [For this reason, I don't make genre the focus of any unit since I don't want to limit my unit to exploring just one genre.] Effective essential questions accommodate many effective answers" (11). To continue the Beowolf example, in her excellent Appendices A and B, she gives an example of an essential question for this unit: "What defines a hero and heroic action?" and lists scores of corrolary texts such as Eaters of the Dead, picture books, short stories, music, informational texts, poetry, TV shows, movies, comics, and graphic novels that can easily be integrated into a Heroes Beowolf unit. She also encourages us to become our own text collectors: "As you listen to music on your drive to and from work... as you look at a magazine... remind you of a novel's character or unit focus? [Collect it in a] read-aloud file" (19).

2: Reading Matters
In a workshopping classroom, students independently read and also hear the teacher reading aloud. Teacher read-alouds (1) "expose students to a wide variety of literature in an enjoyable way, (2) facilitate students' abilities to compare and contrast..., (3) model effective reading behaviors, and (4) provides opportunities to share a love of books with readers" (15.) In general, shorter texts (picture books, short stories, poetry, song lyrics, and informational texts) work better for read-alouds, whereas longer texts (such as YA novels) work better for independent reading (16).

In lieu of a short story unit, she interweaves short stories into her workshopping units (18).

The best purposes for read-alouds are (1) to build students' background knowledge (about content or craft, e.g. about the Holocaust or the frame structure of works (think The Canterbury Tales), (2) to deepen understanding of the unit's essential question(s) (17-8).

As a teacher who wings read-alouds, this part stood out to me: "Teachers need to plan for a read-aloud as much as they plan for a mini-lesson on onomatopoeia. We begin by providing any necessary background information [frontloading] and generating interest in the text... When reading aloud, make sure you preview the content... practice it, and time [yourself]. Middle and High School teachers especially need to practice picture books... Establish expectations before you begin... Your level of enthusiasm for read-alouds is contagious, so make it good. Act out parts, use hand gestures, move around while you are reading" (21). It is also important to come up in advance with discussion questions to ask when you finish reading.

I've done SSR in my classroom for four years, so I nodded my head at a lot of what Styslinger wrote about how to do independent reading in one's classroom. However, I have resisted doing individual student conferences doing SSR since I haven't seen much of a benefit but rather many drawbacks—students losing focus during reading time as I move around the classroom talking to students and sidebar conversations springing up. However, I do realize that I need to do better at monitoring student comprehension. She suggests pair-shares or group shares after SSR, guided by a teacher-given prompt. She also suggests response blogs or vlogs: "When students blog or vlog, I post replies, and we engage in online reading conversations. Students also respond to one another. Just giving students time to read is not enough" (27). Additionally, I need to start explicitly teaching reading strategies that students can put into practice during their SSR reading and to find a way to hold students accountable for this. "Students also need to be held accountable for making meaning of what is read" (26).

I don't like the idea of having students choose from a set of seven YA novels what they are going to read during SSR (see 29). I prefer to give students the freedom to read whatever they want, with their parent's approval.

3: The Power of Language
I had thought read-alouds were what she calls in this chapter shared reads. The difference between them is that "during a shared reading, students have a copy of the text either projected or placed in front of them[, which students do not have during a read-aloud]" (31). Shared readings use more complex texts than read-alouds do: "While we may read aloud a wide variety of genres related to the unit focus, we always share and close read the core canonical text" (32).

Using a shared read, the teacher can model for the students her process of making meaning of a text, writing notes on the board/on the paper under the document camera as they describe aloud to the class their thinking process, specifically connections, predictions, inferences, mental pictures, questions, and summaries (34-5). Then, students can do this themselves in a close read. In addition to or instead of looking for making-meaning strategies as listed above, students can look for literary devices (allusions, similes, alliteration, etc.), contemplate why certain words are chosen, or analyze how and why a certain character is portrayed or why a specific literary element is used. Students can do shared reads on a sheet of paper or on a Google Doc, and this work can be done by students individually or with partners or small groups. A class discussion follows naturally after students finish their close read (36-7).

I like her suggestion that "ideally, a passage for close reading is selected by students" (37).

Shared reads and close reads are useful for teaching grammar. Reflecting on this, she writes, "So much of our teacher energy in the past has centered on the negatives, as students circled or underlined improper pronoun case, dangling modifiers, or incorrect punctuation. Ironically, we directed students' attention to what is incorrect, rather than showing them what is correct" (39).

She confirms that round-robin reading isn't an effective teaching practice (42).

As has happened so many times as I've read this book, she has opened my mind to teaching protocols I thought I knew. I've always thought reader's theater means the teacher formats a section of an (often canonical) text into a script format and assigns parts to students. Then, we read the scene together as a class, with the teacher often serving as the narrator. she says that reader's theater is when the students, in small groups, prepare the script themselves from an assigned text. Students write the script, making decisions about what's important, what can be cut, etc. Characters can be split in two, eliminated, or abridged as necessary to convey the meaning most effectively. After students write the script, they print them out, each student highlighting their parts. Then they practice, and finally, students perform their scripts in front of the class (p42-45). She even suggests [rubric] categories for assessment: scene encapsulation, participation, script, creativity, and volume/clarity/infection (45). I will definitely try this!

4: Engaging Reader Response
The first part of the chapter covers literary theories. The Reader Response theory or framework simply means letting students respond emotionally to texts before doing any formal literary analysis or interpretive work. She says that, according to the Reader Response theory, instead of beginning with interpretation or "immediately providing background on the time period or information about the author, we begin by connecting some component of our students' lives with a component of a literary work... Rather than lecturing on the life and times of Shakespeare, we try to stir emotions and nurture associations, asking students if they believe in love at first sight" (52). Interestingly, the CCSS is not based on Reader Response theory, but on New Criticism, the prevailing literary theory of the 1940s through the 1970s that asserts meaning resides in the text and can be drawn out through analysis; the fact that CCSS is based on New Criticism is obvious simply by noting the number of times "analyze" appears in the standards. These two theories can work together, she asserts: "In the workshopping classroom, we begin with reader response... these initial assertions form the foundation on which we build... During formal analysis, we guide students in understanding how a text achieves its effects and, often, its meaning," interweaving relevant author and time period information at this time (49). "As we share [our ideas], we foster an interpretive classroom community" (53). But it all starts with students' emotional response to some component of the text.

Students can respond to texts in a writer's notebook, of course, but they can use various technological platforms (edmodo, padlet, schoology, etc.) and blogs and discussion protocols such as think, pair, and share.

She gives an example of how to begin with student responses, à la reader response theory, in a dystopian unit. First, she has students respond in writing to one or more of Probst's questions distilled from L. Rosenblatt (see 59-60). Then students "engaged in conversation about the text with a partner, and later, the larger group" (60).

5: Ways to Talk
Two comments in this chapter hit me particularly strongly. First, "When they turn the final page of Allegiant, completing Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy, they typically don't beg to showcase their knowledge in a 5-paragraph essay. Instead, just like us, students... want to talk about what they have read" (65). Second, "When I first tried to facilitate book clubs, I failed miserably. I presumed too much... [Students] needed scaffolds for both talk and topic, which I initially fell short in providing" (70).

Following the latter quote, she gives a helpful step-by-step guide for facilitating book clubs in the middle or high school classroom, which I will briefly summarize here. Most basically, for students to be able to succeed in book clubs, the teacher "first nurtures student independent reaction to a text, and then creates an opportunity for student interaction [in groups of 3-5]" (70).

Scaffold #1: Have students watch a book club in action, instructing them to write notes on what they see and hear. Facilitate a class discussion on what students' noticed, making a list of positive elements [on chart paper, for example] that can later be used to formulate a grading rubric and/or rubric for student self-evaluation (70).
Scaffold #2: Provide sentence starters for conversation (see 73).
Scaffold #3: Set up a fishbowl seating arrangement so that 4-6 students are in the middle surrounded by the rest of the class. Have the center students model a book club conversation while the rest of the class take notes. Afterward, discuss what the outer students noticed (and the center students experienced) (73).
Scaffold #4: Give students a short text, such as a poem or song lyrics, to respond to, then practice a book club conversation using the sentence starters mentioned above. Do this with a couple of short texts before moving on to a YA book.
Scaffold #5: Stop students in their early book club discussions to prompt them to reflect, asking them, "Is your conversation focused?", "Is everyone talking?", and/or "How are you demonstrating listening?" (73, citing Gilles, 2010).

This chapter also talks about Socratic Seminars; as with book clubs, a teacher should not presume that his students will be able--without scaffolds--to have a rich Socratic Seminar discussion.

Two ideas for Socratic Seminars I liked: (1) Jessica has her students in the outer circle, in addition to (or maybe in lieu of?) giving the inner circle feedback on their discussion, post on their laptops two comments/follow-up questions related to the inner circle's ongoing discussion (76). (2) Tim has his students write down an open-ended discussion question for homework each night, which will be used during their mid- or end-of-unit Socratic Seminar (77). Finally, it's worth mentioning that in her own research, she noticed that students who engage in Socratic Seminars do better at coming up with counterarguments and providing rebuttals to those counterarguments (75).

6: Mini-Lessons to Teach
The first several pages of this chapter were generic. This comment, though, sparked my imagination: "I don't always direct students to worthy examples [during my mini-lessons on craft]; I want them to make their own discoveries of model writing while reading" (86). While in my experience, it's hard for students to find model writing on their own, I imagine I could offer this as extra credit in my class if students found a model writing section from their SSR book.

Another comment that caught my interest was this: "Our ultimate goal as workshop teachers is to steer students toward independence, and mini-lessons are unlike lectures in that students are active and social participants" (72). She later gives an example of this, "Once a teacher has modeled how she questions when reading during a mini-lesson, she might place students in small groups and have them write down their questions as she reads aloud a shorter passage of text. Next, collaborative learning occurs as students share and compare their questions with group members, then with the whole class. [Finally,] each student practices on his or her own" (87). This part reminds me of her comment from an earlier chapter that often a mini-lesson works well beforea period of SSR (silent sustained reading) to provide students a scaffold for their independent reading.

Explaining that secondary teachers often overlook how-to (procedural) mini-lessons for things such as book clubs, she says that "many of those same teachers become "frustrated [and] abandon book clubs, declaring students are not ready for this literacy liberty" (88). I have had this very experience as a teacher.

"Before engaging students in a Socratic circle, for example, the teacher needs to implement a number of how-to mini-lessons, [such as] how to ask open-ended, thought-provoking, and clear questions, how to [ask follow-up questions of] other students, in response to their ideas," how to actively listen during a Socratic circle, etc. (88-9).

To help students make connections, ask them what the canonical text reminds them of (perhaps after doing a think-aloud to model this process for students; 90). To help students predict, either (1) pass out notecards with a word/repeated word from the text they are about to read and have students walk around, sharing their cards with each other (2) project images from the text about to be read, or (3) project a wordcloud. Then, have students in groups craft a "We think..." statement predicting what the text will be about (91).

Students can ask questions of a text, visualize it, and summarize it using digital tools, such as https://www.homemade-gifts-made-easy..... For a mini-lesson on text structure, she gives "an overview of text structures, I provide a think-aloud as I read highlighting structural components. I then guide students to continue reading on their own. In small groups, students share what they noticed... and then collaboratively create a say (what did the author say) do (what craft moves did the author do to say this) chart" (103).

Use a "it says, I say, And so" chart to provide a visual scaffold for making inferences (105). "Adolescent students are more willing to adopt a strategy when they understand why and how it helps them as readers. Make connections to daily life. Project pictures [from which students need to make inferences]" (106).

A "List-Group-Label" tasks: List all words they can think of related to a unit focus. With partner group words into categories. Discuss as whole class (112). Extra credit idea: students find an unknown word in their SSR book and write its definition to put around the room.

7: Ways to Talk
Reading and writing should be integrated, not "schizophrenic" (118). "Write narratives about a heroic moment when reading Beowolf, about important decisions when reading Hamlet, about a life-changing journey when reading The Odyssey" (119).

An "I-Search" paper steps: locate experts, read all you can before talking to experts, test experts' statements against one another, consult firsthand sources, tell your search as a story (127). I-Search paper structure: What I Knew before, why I wrote this, the story of my search, and what I learned (130).

8: Workshopping as a Process
Appendices D-H give example formative and summative assignments for a Beowolfhero unit, and pp. 141-2 gives the unit calendar.

Examples from other teachers' units sparked an end-of-class idea: cold call 2-3 students a question relating to that day's lesson or the unit's essential question.

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this work as it was an NCTE publication, but it didn’t quite live up to what I expected. Much of the text felt repetitive, unnecessarily dense, and vague; while it includes lots of generalized examples, I prefer professional development books that provide visual examples and student samples of fantastic strategies and activities you can instantly adapt and incorporate into your units of study (see any works by Kelly Gallagher) or new ways of thinking about assessment (highly recommend Flash Feedback!). I didn’t find anything new or thought-provoking that would revolutionize my classroom in Workshopping the Canon; it might be better suited to a beginner teacher who needs help learning basic reading and writing methods. I’m still giving it three stars because the appendix includes list of works from multiple genres to pair with the canonical texts and a few other helpful resources which provides a little food for thought.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Styslinger explains how to implement reading and writing workshop while also teaching classic canonical texts. She encourages the use of thematic units with a plethora of mentor texts of all genres and formats, as well as frequent group work and creative analysis activities. She first explains why we need workshop and reading and then goes into how to encourage talk, craft thoughtful responses, and design effective mini-lessons. She wraps up the book by explaining what role writing workshop plays in all of this.

This didn’t blow my mind, but I still found some good ideas in this book. I have always struggled to follow through on thematic units, but I’m giving it another shot this year, and the example thematic text sets really helped. I also liked the variety of reading responses she covered, although I already do most of them, and I appreciated the break down of mini-lessons into different categories. Even though I teach in mini-lesson format, I think this helped me see how to broaden what can be a mini-lesson. I don’t really plan to use this to teach a whole class canonical text, but I still pulled plenty of ideas that I can use with the texts and unit structure I am planning.

[Shelby Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was honestly the best PD book I have read in my career. The ideas a more towards the high school English teacher, but I could definitely see ideas blooming for the middle school level as well. This book does a great job of explaining how to combat student reluctance to read while also increasing reading stamina. I have used more contemporary YA in my classroom before, but I’m excited to try the workshopping approach this fall. This book is truly inspiring.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are doing anything with anchor texts and mentor texts, if you are using mini-lessons and modeling, if you are incorporating socratic seminar, fishbowl discussions or readers theater, you are workshopping the canon. I didn't find anything new or thought provoking. If you are not familiar with the above the book is nicely organized in the why and then the how with examples of what it could look like in a classroom. The appendices arenalso very useful.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great outline and examples of all kinds of best practices in secondary English teaching. Appendix B, with lists of texts to teach with some frequently taught texts, is worth the cost of the book. See my blog for further information. https://kimessenburg.blogspot.com/201...

[Kara Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was a little tough to rate. I agree philosophically with everything in it, and if you are new to teaching workshop at the secondary level it is a must read!, But I was hoping for some more new ideas. That said I did find a few take aways and further research that was helpful! Lots of references to other books I have loved and that have shaped my teaching

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was good, but definitely more helpful for newer teachers. I feel like as a 10-year teacher this more worked to reinforce ideas and concepts that I have already begun to implement in the classroom rather than providing new information/help. Still some great essential questions and paired readings that help with workshopping!

[Wendie Barney Boucher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book and pulled a lot of great ideas for workshopping various novels. It offers great ideas and suggestions for ways to really help students make stronger connections between their own experiences and canonical novels, which can be challenging for many students to understand.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teaching classical texts and teaching in a workshop method always seemed incompatible, but Mary Styslinger laid out her solution clearly and comprehensibly. The charts with topics, essential questions and compatible texts for a range of canonical texts was super useful.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clear, informational text! A good read for any ELA teacher interested in figuring out how to strategically piece together cannonical texts with the wide range of everything else (book clubs, writing and reading workshops)! A LOT of good resources here.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent PD book, lots of great ideas and suggestions

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for aspiring and current teachers! This book altered my approach to teaching the canon and integrating high-interest books into the classroom to make my students into avid readers.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Regroups fundamentals of reading and writing instruction into a structure that seems more engaged with literature and writing. I might try this out with a few novels I teach next year.

[Morgan Weilbacher-Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very comprehensive guide of how to workshop the canon as an English teacher!

[Vanessa]

Nothing wrong with it, just never finished. I may go back and try again another time.

[Kari]

If you teach ELA, you should try this method.

[Chip · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you’ve been a teacher for some time, then this book is a reminder rather than anything revelatory.

[Susan Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very practical with tons of ideas about how to bring canonical works into today's society. The chapters are broken down by topics such as read alouds, assessment, writing, discussion, etc. so finding information and activities is really easy. Styslinger does a great job of balancing research, theory, and pedagogy with classroom reality. I already operate in a reading workshop mindset so this doesn't change what I do drastically, but I do have several pages bookmarked for ideas and activities. If you're unfamiliar with the workshop model, I highly recommend this book.

[MARY Brazeau]

Workshopping the Canon