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Required Texts (Shared Literature)
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak
Blume, Judy. Forever
Crutcher, Chris. Athletic Shorts: Six Short Stories
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby
Garden, Nancy. Annie on My Mind
Holt, Kimberly Willis. When Zachary Beaver Came to Town
Jones, Leland, & Newman, Lloyd. Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America
Lowry, Lois. The Giver
Myers, Walter Dean. Monster
Paulsen, Gary. Hatchet
Sacher, Louis. Holes
Spiegelman, Art. Maus I and Maus II
Spinelli, Jerry. Stargirl
Taylor, Mildred. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Williams, Lori Aurelia. When Kambia Elaine Flew in from Neptune
Wittlinger, Ellen. Hard Love
Additional Self-selected Texts
In addition to the books we will read as a class (listed above), you are required to read 10 other books of your choice. These must be books that are teachable to adolescent readers. For some of these selections, I will choose the genre but otherwise you may choose any books/titles/genre you wish. We will discuss the following genres in class on the dates listed below, so please select one text from these genres and have these readings done by that date. Also, bring the text(s) to class if possible.
Date Genre
2/19 Romance Fiction, Adolescent Series Fiction
4/2 Poetry
4/9 Books for Reluctant Readers
4/16 Audio books
Annotated Bibliography
You will create an annotated bibliography of all the literary texts you will read in this class--the shared texts and the self-selected. Write an entry of 2 to 4 sentences or 100 words maximum for each text. At the end of the semester you will turn these in with a brief cover essay describing the themes that emerged for you.
You will share your annotations of the 10 self-selected texts (but not the shared books) with the rest of the class by submitting them to our course list-serv. You may send them in one or two at a time or in one bundle near the end of the semester. Please include the text inside an email rather than as an attachment and email it to:
adol-lit@list.uiowa.edu
For this assignment, I'd like you to write a relatively brief autobiography of yourself as a reader of literature. What I'm hoping for, of course, is a kind of sketch of how you've developed as a reader, that is, a sketch of someone who has a history as a reader, who likes certain kinds of literature (and not others), who reads in certain ways, (but not others), and who thinks about literature in some way that is characteristic. I'm hoping that your essay will be able to explore how your reading habits have changed over time and how they might vary when you're reading for class or reading for yourself. You might even want to speculate about how or what you are going to read when you are finished with school, when you are reading only for yourself. The most important part of this essay, though, is that it be about yourself, giving you an opportunity to think through some issues that you might not have considered before.
Five or six pages. More if you need it, but not much more.
Overview
Reader"s Theater can be an effective way of introducing and engaging readers in different literary texts (novels, short stories, plays, and even poems) through performance. At its simplest level, Reader's Theater serves as a visual and oral book talk but can also be a used as a student-generated project in conjunction with a text.
In this class you will work with a partner to develop a script around a text of your choosing--either one we read as a group or one you and/or your teammate has read. On the night of your performance, you will recruit readers/performers and assign roles. Each performance lasts just a few minutes but allow time for questions about the text. Please have a class set to hand out to classmates and a copy for Bruce. If possible, you can recruit your readers the week before and can provide them with a script. Do not worry about assigning roles by gender--it is perfectly acceptable for women to read male parts, etc.
Elements of the Script
A Reader's Theater script includes three key pieces:
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Staging information: a brief section listing the character parts and narrator which can also include directions for positioning the readers.
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Narrator's introduction: this provides a brief but enticing introduction to the book and its characters. This section should tell the audience the chapter or section from which the selection is taken and introduce the speakers. It is vital that it include some context for the scene so that viewers can understand the sequence of events and dialogue.
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Script: taken from an engaging moment in the text (but rarely from the actual climax or final resolution--don't give away the ending, for instance) and usually including dialogue. Scene selection is important. You will have to write in transitions and a part for the narrator to provide context and to explain some of the events. Generally, if the narrator plays too big a role, it is better to select a different scene.
Performance
Select readers/performers who are comfortable with reading aloud. Often students will be more willing to take a role if they have time to read over the script ahead of time. Allow students to take scripts home if possible. It is not necessary for the scripts to be memorized--usually this is just an animated reading. Encourage students to read "in voice" and with animation. This makes the experience more enjoyable for the audience and performers. If one or more of the students have read the text, then they can answer questions about the book and make recommendations otherwise the teacher can serve this role.
Instructional Possibilities
1. Students alone or in pairs can create a Reader's Theater script as a way of responding to and sharing a book of their own choosing as in an individual reading program.
2. Groups of students can develop a Reader's Theater script after reading a book in a literature circle.
3. Teachers can generate and obtain Reader's Theater scripts to use as a way of introduce books to students. This works well for literature circles and in individual reading programs.
4. Students can take Reader's Theater to another level and can bring in props and can add more movement and action to the scripts and thus create a skit that depicts a scene from a text.
Other Resources:
ERIC Bibliography on RT http://www.indiana.edu/~eric_rec/ieo/bibs/rdr-thea.html
Aaron Shepard's RT Webpage: http://www.aaronshep.com/rt/
Downloadable RT Scripts http://www.geocities.com/rtscripts/RT.sit
For this assignment I'd like you to try your hand at writing a narrative for an audience of young adult readers. I use the word "narrative" because I want to leave open the question of whether you write fiction or non-fiction. I want the intended audience to be clear--imagine young readers, ages 11 to 16.
Use everything you've learned about the genres of young adult fiction and nonfiction from your reading so far, and use everything you know about adolescents from your own experience.
Here are two possibilities that I see for this assignment, but feel free to play with genre so long as your finished work is targeted at 11 to 16 year olds:
- Write the first chapter to a young adult narrative. Remember that your job in this first chapter is to get a narrative moving, to introduce character, setting, plot, and probably voice--to get us inside a world. It will almost certainly be easier to write this chapter if you have some idea of what the narrative as a whole is going to be about (e.g., drugs, divorce, competition, death, parents, growing up more generally). In fact, it might be easier to write if you generate a very rough outline of a plot that your narrative might follow--again, if you were going to actually write it. You needn't include the outline, but you might want to have it in mind.
- Write a short story intended for young adults. Think of the short stories that we've read in class, but also explore other such collections that you've encountered to get ideas. Be creative and feel free to play with the genre.
I'm thinking that these chapters will be somewhere between 5 and 7 pages long. Take more space if you need it, but not much more. And please, above all, have fun with this. Write a parody if you want to. Play with the conventions. But use them--show your readers that you know what they are.
Your last assignment will have two related parts. In the first part (abour five or six pages long), I'd like you to think about how you might orchestrate the instruction for a group of literary texts (or other kinds of textss--movies, television shows, etc.) to a particular group of students. The number of texts might range from 6 to 8; clearly, they should be in some way connected to one another. For your paper you will need first to describe briefly the class of students you are imagining. Then explain why you have chosen the texts you have, what kinds of talk and writing you want to encourage in your teaching, and, in general, how you would evaluate your students' work.
In the second part of your paper, (again, about five or six pages long, maybe longer), I'd like you to select one of the books from the group and describe in specific terms how you would teach it. You should break this out on a day-by-day basis, explaining how you would introduce the book and connect it to those texts that come before and after, what questions you would ask in discussion, what writing tasks you would assign, and what specific means you would use to evaluate your students' thinking about the text.
I would imagine that the paper as a whole will be about 12-15 pages long. Please think of it as both exploratory and practical. I hope that you will stretch your wings and try out some challenging ideas, but I also hope that the project will be useful to you when you begin teaching.
Having made it this far, I'd like to ask you to turn in your final teaching project along with all the other assignments for this class in a portfolio. This allows us both to see the scope of your work and to reflect upon it. Please put this into a notebook or other method of binding so that it will remain together. Use the following outline in helping you organize it:
I. Table of Contents
II. Reading Autobiography
III. Young Adult Narrative (book chapter)
IV. Reader's Theater Script
V. Annotated Bibliography with 1-2 page cover essay
VI. Final Teaching Project
Following this organization will help me in evaluating your work for the semester.
