student centered reading

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Student-Centered Reading Activities

James Moffett; Betty Jane Wagner

The English Journal, Vol. 80, No. 6. (Oct., 1991), pp. 70-73.

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Student-Centered Reading ActivitiesJames Moffett and Betty Jane Wagner

People fit reading into diverse personal patternsand schedules of seeking fulfillment. We readvarious sorts of discourse for various reasons atvarious stages of individual development. It isfutile and mischievous to try to codify all this intoone program for all. Jus t array the kinds of read-ing and help individuals make their way aroundthe repertory. This is the here-is-God's-plentymethod. Watch students' patterns of choice andplay to that, as knowing parents do. Freely makesuggestions based on what you perceive aboutthem, but let them decide. The power to choosewhat one reads makes for the best reading pro-gram you can devise.

Structuring literature around concepts ofeither form or content interferes with individu-alized reading, and individualized reading shouldbe initiated as soon as children can read at all andpreserved through the years at all costs. Nothingyou or anyone else can cook up by way of units o rsequence will teach reading so well as guided indi-vidual choice in an interactive setting. The reallearning will occur as individuals and small groupsmake up their own sequences as well as thematic orformal units. Your structuring best comes whenyou organize a classroom library, provide direc-tions for reading activities, and confer with indi-viduals about choices of texts. If you predigestform and content for your students, you will robthem of their education by short-circuiting theirthinking.

The tradition in secondary school of organizingliterature around nationalities, periods, or themesworks against individualization. It would be moreinteresting for groups or individuals to pursue asubject of interest across national or ethnic liter-atures. Organizing literature by time and placedoesn't do ustice to the nature of literature, which

is not mainly national or historical. Thematic or -ganization pre-interprets . By focusing readers atthe outset on preselected frames of reference,both historical and thematic approaches meddleterribly with reader response. Such approacheshave made too many students dislike both readingand lite rature. While taking control of texts awayfrom readers, they also misrepresent literature,which affects people personally, what they thinkand feel. It is a figurative, artful mode of dis-course, an experience itself as well as a perceptionabout experience, created not merely to be und er-stood but to be undergone.

The historical and ethnic aspects of literatureare indeed worthwhile in themselves and often il-luminate the texts, as all other aspects of contextdo. The relations, in fact, between texts, authors,and their environments will naturally interestyoungsters. But if background becomes fore-ground , it will filter the text so much as to preventreaders from knowing what their native responseswould have been. It is far better education to letindividuals and groups explore contexts withintheir own programs. One thirteen-year-old girlbecame so fascinated with French history afterreading The Three usketeers that she read an adultbiography of Madame Pompadour and otherworks about the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-turies. Teachers and aides can serve as resources.

Presenting literature through concepts andterms of literary criticism poses a similar problem.For one thing, both literary history and literarycriticism contain differing schools of thought, notto say at time vehement disagreement. Studentsshould not be brought u p in one or another camp,and surveying all the various factions takes timeaway from the literature itself. Even old Aristo-telian concepts like plot, character, and theme risk

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stereotyping the way readers think of fiction anddrama. Th e priority for students is to experiencethe l iterature itself. Parallel to choice of texts is thesecond issue of control-who decides interpreta-tions.

The currents of literary theory flow aroundthree poles-the auth or, the text, and the reader.Which is most authoritative for determiningmeaning? Factions differ over emphasis on one or

By focusing readers onpreselected fram es of reference,both historical and thematicapproaches meddle terriblywith reader response.the other or over the relations among them. Theserelations are so basic that if students are enabled toselect and deal with texts in the ways recom-mended here, they will reinvent the schools of lit-erary theory for themselves, which is how theyshould first know them. Literary history and crit-ical theory can enhance response, but you woulddo best to bring these spontaneously into studentsdiscussions, performances, o r other reworkings oftexts, when they can use such ideas to extend theirinitial responses. Terminology is unimportant.

The following are selected means to readingmaturity and involvement in literature.Partner ReadingPartner reading is taking turns sight-readingaloud to each other in a group of two to four stu-dents who have chosen to read a text together.Partners may have a copy each of the same text ormay pass one book around. The activity teachesmore if all have a copy to follow while others read.One purpose is to allow weak or dependent read-ers to read collectively while socializing and to pooltheir skills to read a text that any one of them alonemight not have enough knowledge, courage, ormotivation to get through.

Part of the point is not even to help each otherbut to read collectively for the sharing of respons-es. Asides are more than welcome. Excellent dis-cussion, in fact, often follows from casual com-ments interjected into the reading. Memberscompare interpretations or predictions, swap ob-servations or tales prompted by the text, and gen-erally enrich each other s comprehension at the

same time that they become more aware of theirown reactions to the text. This is how studentscome to value personal responses to reading. Thisis also the genesis of literary criticism.

ramatizing and Performing TextsDramatizing and performing texts entail close in-terpretation in order to know what to render andhow to render it. Players working up a perfor-mance must think about and discuss many aspectsof the text, and this experience pays off hand-somely during silent reading. S tudents become at-tuned to tone and style by imitating characters andplaying roles. The structural cues and patterns oftexts encountered in silent reading can often betranslated through drama into visual, auditory,and spatial equivalents.

Reading aloud is the base from which perform-ing a text is a natural extension. Working up areading with one to three partners prepares wellfor bigger script rehearsals. small group canrender a text by simply reading in unison or byreading aloud on e at a time. The goal may or maynot be presentation to an audience. As a develop-ment of partner reading, playing with the text mayitself be enough of an incentive. Or the group mayrehearse until students perfect a version to record.

The general procedure for rehearsed readingis to sift and discuss some reading selections, talksome about the main point and approach of thetext chosen, try reading parts to get a sense of whoshould take certain voices and how the pieceshould be treated, then cast and rehearse. Typ-ically, this process interweaves silent reading (asmembers study the text a bit to size it up) , trial oralreadings (as they sound out the text to listen forideas about meaning and the best rendering), con-sulting the dictionary and other people for pro-nunciation and definition and other information,discussion of author s intention and characteriza-tion and so on (as they work out the content to beexpressed), and textual analysis (as they dig forhelpful particulars).

Acting out memorized scripts is what mostteachers think of first when they envision per-forming texts. This often evokes images of hoursof rehearsal and the frantic tension of the finalproduction of a play--complete with costumes,stage, lights, properties, and so on. If this is whatperformances of texts were as a regular routine,few teachers could justify them as a staple class-room process, as we recommend. Occasional per-

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formances of memorized scripts for a large audi-ence are enjoyable and stimulating, of course, butregular rehearsed reading, text in hand, for anaudience of people at hand is by far the more valu-able experience for the total language develop-ment of the student.

Any rehearsed reading or singing can be re-corded on audio- or videotape and played later foran audience. As students listen and discusschanges between tapings, they become sensitizedto various voicings,of text. Producing a tape pro-vides a stimulus to read. And the tapes becomepart of the classroom library for other students tolisten to themselves or to use with the text for read-along.Listening to and Watching Performed TextsRead large quantities of stories and poems to stu-dents, sometimes assembled as a whole class,sometimes in small groups. Before youngsters canread much themselves, this practice is, of course, anecessity if their appetite for literature is to beboth nourished and satisfied. It also makes read-ing a common part of everyday life and showsmany children of nonreading parents what booksare all about and what pleasure and stimulus canbe associated with them. I t also puts you in a givingposition. While receiving this gift, learners devel-op an urge to assume the teacher s power, to be-come able to do themselves what the teacher does.In this respect you become a model to emulate.

Continuing to read to youngsters who havethemselves learned how to read serves to show

Hearing a text read aloud wellwhile following it with the eyeshelps students to learn to readbetter both aloud and silentlywhat good oral reading is like-how it recreates astoryteller s voice, how it brings out moods andfeelings and meanings, how i t follows cues ofpunctuation and typography. Your interpretivereadings prepare students to read to other people.

Hearing a text read aloud well while followingitwith the eyes helps students to learn to read betterboth aloud and silently. From good recordingsthey can hear all aspects of print brought skillfullyto life-letters, typography, paragraphing, punc-tuation marks, and line settings of poetry. Pronun-

ciations of words rarely heard in common speechare sounded while the listeners are looking at thewords, enabling them to read those words aloudwhen encountered and also encouraging them touse those words in conversation without fear ofmispronouncing them.

Modern technical texts can become accessiblealso despite unfamiliar terms, heavy loading ofthought and information, and difficult sentencestructures. Hearing Shakespeare can almost obvi-ate the need for textual notes, for professional ac-tors can not only give pronunciations of old wordsand proper names but also make clear the mean-ing of words that have changed sense and unraveldifficult syntax caused by older grammar and po-etic compression. This is in addition to bringingout the drift of whole speeches, the characteriza-tion of .speakers, and the dramatic interplayamong characters. Excellent discussion is oftenprompted by students surprise that the voice theyhear on a recording does not sound as they imag-ined it when reading silently.Transforming TextsT o transform a text is to take the essence of what itexpresses and transfer it to another form of writ-ing or to another medium altogether.

Any tale that learn ers have read can be sha red withothers by paraphrasing.A prose fable can be rewritten as a poem an anec-dot e as a script a story as a series of letters a biogra-phy as an autobiography a diary as a mem oir or amystery story as a film script.Rewriting prose o r poe try as a script automaticallyshif ts the medium from book to s tage radio f i lmor television. O r texts might be recast into a nonve r-bal medium through music d ance drawing ormime.

Reading ournalsStudents reading silently need a way to r p t rtheir responses-bring them to awareness-equivalent to uttering responses in collective read-ing. Annotating the margins of a text would be themost direct way, but most often the text is not thestudent s own. Occasionally, however, studentscan photocopy a short text so as to leave unusuallywide margins for annotating. Suggest sometimesthat a group silently reading a text in common dothis and bring their annotations to the ensuing dis-cussion. Or individuals could do this for a one-to-one conference with you.

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phrases, or passages that prompted them. Encour-age students to underline, circle, draw arrows, orinvent other graphics to single out and relate thesecitations to each other and to the marginal re-marks. Make clear that they may jot down any-thing that comes to mind while reading that text-memories, images, feelings, observations, all sortsof associations. These may not have anything to dowith explaining or evaluating the text, though theymight, if desired at some point, be used for that.

Readers bring their journalsto conferences or groupdiscussions and refer to themwhile sharing.Annotations are a record of a reading experiencefor later reference in discussion or other follow-up. Annotation should lead easily into journalsand establish the idea of registering responses im-mediately and relating them specifically to certainparts of the text.

Some readers find a double-entry journaluseful. On one half of a journal page they notewhat occurs to them about a text and leave theother half for a later response to the response.They may ask the teacher or someone else to writeon this blank half what occurs to them about theoriginal entry . This can become a valued and valu-able dialogue about reading experience. (See theperiodical about dialogue journals of all sorts, Di-alogue, edited by Jana Staton, Joy Kreeft Peyton,and Shelley Gutstein, Center for Applied Lin-guistics, 11 18 22nd St. NW, Washington, DC20037.) Or the readers themselves might make thesecond entry at a more removed moment, perhapsafter reading something else during the interim.

Editor s no te: This art icle is an excerp t adapte d from a c hapterwith the same title in the fo urt h edition of Student CenteredLan-guage Arts, K-12 by James Moffet t and Betty Jane Wagner,which is scheduled for publication by BoyntonlCook within th enext month or so. EJ expresses appreciat ion to the authors a ndthe pu blisher.

Readers bring their journals to conferences orgro up discussions and refer to them while sharing.They can also mine them for writing ideas, whichare often triggered by reading.

iscussing ReadingWhen a group has finished reading a selection,members may come together to raise questionsabout things they did not grasp, things they wantto know more about , or issues in the selection theywant to talk about. They can jot these down andbring them to the group. They also just shareopinions or feelings about what they have readand compare interpretations. This comparing isof vast importance, for it allows readers to discoverthat their reactions or interpretations may not bethe only ones justified by the text.

Such a group is, of course, ideal for sharing en-tries in the reading journals. Once students are fa-miliar and fluent with discussion based on readingjournals , there is no more powerful way to enrichunderstanding of texts and increase the range ofreader response. It will do more for the study ofliterature than any other activity you can sponsor.Writing in Literary FormsStudents who have tried their hand at writing fic-tion, poems, and scripts have an inside track onunderstanding what professional authors do withthose forms. Participating in writing workshopsfocused on them enhances considerably the ap-preciation of literature, because not only arelearners role-playing the poet, playwright, orshort story writer, they are reading drafts of sim-ilar efforts by partners. Being part of the creationof these texts as both author and audience sen-sitizes them to many issues of the writer s craft thatincrease enjoyment and perception manifold.

We believe such democratic and collaborativeways of learning to interpret will carry all studentsto their maximum development in literacy and lit-erature.

Mariposa, California 95338Natio nal-L ouu C nzversityEvan ston, Illznois 6 2 1

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