How Does It Mean?: Engaging Reluctant Readers Through Literary Theory

by Leila Christenbury

This book is nothing short of fantastic.
Leila Christenbury, coauthor of Writing on Demand When you search for ways to help reluctant readers, the often esoteric world of literary theory may not seem like a natural place to start. Yet in How Does It Mean? youll discover that the core ideas of literary theories translate into immediately useful strategies that spark students interest and encourage them to adopt a more active role in their own reading. How Does It Mean? takes literary theory out of the ivory tower, makes it useful and accessible, and places it squarely into your teaching repertoire. With reading strategies and instructional methods that draw on five well-known theoriesJungian/archetypal theory, objective theory, reader response theory, biographical theory, and thematic critical theoryLisa Schade Eckert shows you how to offer reluctant readers a pathway into texts through theory as you explicitly introduce them to reading and discussing literature. Eckert also gives you opportunities to differentiate instruction and to meet language arts standards using theory applications as well as to scaffold other popular strategies such as questioning the text, questioning the author, rereading, and connecting to prior knowledge. How Does It Mean? teases out opportunities to explicitly teach reading strategies, positions literary theory as a comprehension strategy for secondary English classrooms, balances content and knowledge by using flexible instructional methods, and models ways in which teachers can encourage critical reading. Best of all, it provides a new way to teach so that all students, especially reluctant ones, come to appreciate literary texts.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Teaching

160 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 2006

Reviews

[Peaches · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciate how Eckert advocates for literary theory and explains how it can encourage reluctant readers instead of it being just for people who like English. I would have liked more curricular examples, but her ideas should be shared with more teachers.

[Rich Farrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been toying with using literary theory in my classes as a framework for students developing their own questions for discussion, and I found that the theoretical pieces she quoted were very clear and will be useful as I think about how I'll reteach some elements next year. I also really appreciated the chapter on creation myths and hero's journey that have helped me begin to rethink how I approach teaching The Odyssey and various creation myths. I would like to see more on feminist and Marxist critiques in her style, but I understand that in the year that she was gathering student work for this book, it seemed that she ran out of time. (Don't we all run out of time? So much to do and so little time.) I'd also like to see how some of these ideas could be differentiated more in future teacher-research, since it seemed like this class was pretty vocal, in a good way, in general.

Overall, I think this was a useful and reader-friendly introduction to ways in which literary theory can be adopted into a curriculum.

[Eliza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great for understanding and teaching literary criticism!

[Mikey T · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was helpful. At first, it was a tough read, but I feel that what the latter chapters provided were some of the most relevant, to me, material I could have read. I am an extremely visual person, and this book provides many ides for how to make texts visual for students. I would recommend this novel to any teacher that is curious about incorporating visual elements into the teaching of a text.
You have to know what you teach. You cannot go blindly into a text and expect your students to understand. You have to be the best reader in the room and show your students the techniques it takes to reach a better understanding of the texts and its relevancy.
Chapter 2 of this novel deals with archetypes. I feel that once students understand archetypes, they will be able to identify a text more easily, thus being able to understand the text on a higher level.
Objectivism is also dealt with. I feel a big way for students to understand objectivism is to learn the difference between connotation and denotation. This will allow them to shed personal associations with certain words, and see what the author’s definition is. Then, students must analyze the structure of the work, using both surface and deep structure to connect meaning. Once the student realizes what denotation is needed, the surface structure will become more visible. From there, it is the deconstruction of the text that will lead to a better understanding.
Chapter 4 deals with Reader Response Theory. This is using prior knowledge to understand a text. This helps students with comprehension, but we have to show students have to use valid associations.
Using biographical and historical information from the author helps with comprehension too. It can allow students to see from the author’s perspective.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lisa Eckert does a nice job of explaining her literary theory throughout her year of teaching high school World Literature to reluctant readers. Her first approach was a fail; she started out by defining what a specific theory was. The students did not get it. As the book progresses on, her methods become more activity and discussion based.

I enjoyed the activities she used. As Eckert was explaining her lessons to her students, I was learning something as well. I had no idea what archetypes were until reading this book! Her final assessment project was a creative way to develop a cumulative final that demanded truly understanding the knowledge. It is evident that the students enjoyed what they were doing.

It is a good book to enforce the importance of not teaching to the test. It lists different theories that could be presented to the class as well as sample projects and activities that could be used in your own classroom. The appendix provides a novel list that provides a variety of reading materials for students to explore. Although this is not my favorite application book I have read, it was a nice reinforcement of what to do in the classroom.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, and think it's a good way to introduce preservice teachers to ways of incorporating literary theory into their curricula. Like Deb Appleman's Critical Encounters, this one takes readers step-by-step through the construction of a class, materials used, and results from the various units. Some theories, as Eckert presents them, seem to be much better fits than others, and some chapters (like the last one) seem somewhat thrown together, without much meat to them. Still, even if I don't use this book again for a class, I probably will use her chapters of objective and reader response theories, since those were, for me, the highlights of the book.

[BookChampions · Rating 4 out of 5]

I tried to read this book three or four years ago, and it seemed dense and impractical (even though it is a fairly short read). Now that I have given a lot of thought to literary theory and how we make meaning in texts, Eckert seems perfectly clear. Paired with Critical Encounters, I need go nowhere else to bring theory to my students. I'm empowered by the thought of asking students to think about how they make meaning while helping them to articulate their own interpretations to texts.