Responding through writing

“To find meaning and purpose in learning, students must be encouraged to think about what they are learning- and therein lies the power of writing.” (Vacca & Linek,1992)

Initially students can begin by writing informally, for example jot down their first impressions and expectations before they started reading the selection. It also can be writing brief notes of things they want to explore and remember while they are reading or write about their reflections after reading. This informal writing will be as their preparation before they started to discuss it in the classroom. During the discussion the students can takes notes and write a longer reflection to extend their feelings and ideas. They may extend this discussion with their Learning Partner or the member of the S3Group through the dialogue journals. This is very helpful because the journal functioned as a vehicle for students to interact with their reading.

What are the teacher roles in order to encourage students to write in the journal? First, teacher needs to identify that there are some students who are really good and do not need any assistance from teacher because they can respond freely in their journal. But there are also some students who really need assistance and guidance from teacher in order to help them writing their journal. Teacher response is very importance to these students, especially in the beginning of their journal writing. A teacher should not only provide affective responses but also an in depth responses to these students. Teacher may use some prompts such as “This story makes me feel………”This prompt, even though it is short, but will be a powerful motivation to the student because they feel happy to have someone to read and response to his journal.

On the other hand, formal writing also may help in responding to literature where it focused on analytical papers that are designed to demonstrate students understanding and interpretation toward the theory they had been taught. This will also helps students to explore their responses toward the literature.

Improving classroom interaction through discussions

Discussion is important because it may help students to develop their high order thinking skills. Students need to be encouraged to participate in a meaningful discussion. By bringing them in that initial response might help them to see others’ response, reactions, insight in that whole class or small group discussions. Eventually, it may provide opportunities for new understandings.

For class discussion, teachers can follow these three steps – setting the stage, creating a dialogue and extending the learning activities. Teachers have to ensure that students can focus to the discussions because if they fail to do so, students will not be ready to move to any other responding that requires high-order thinking skills. How a teacher can make sure the students will focus? A teacher can direct the class so that the students can respond by giving general reactions to their reading. Teachers may use certain statement or questions to attract and gain students focus. The statement and questions should be general enough so that students can express their reactions freely than just try to find out the right answers. This of course will help students to understand their feelings and clarify their thinking about their selection of reading.

Enhancing the understanding an perception of literature

To enhance understanding and perception of literature, there are some recommendations on how the instructional framework in a literature classroom should be. Samway et al. (1991) found that students emphasize on four things: the importance of reading complete books, talking about books, being given some choice over which books they would read and having plenty of time to read. Besides that, Au (1993) recommends the concept of community of learners with varying group arrangements for multicultural classrooms. Meanwhile, Brown and Stephen include ways to involve students in whole-class, small group, and paired and individual activities. The approaches include classroom learning community (CLC) student sharing and study groups, learning partners and individual learning.

In the CLC, everyone including the teacher is a learner. It is also a vehicle that can enables teachers and students to share with each other what they are reading. This approach also gives opportunity to students to take leadership role in establishing sharing community. When students and teachers share their experience with the literature, they are actually clarify and articulate their reactions, ideas and beliefs about what they have read. On the other hand, in study group, students will have the opportunity to encourage and support the effort of each other. They also explore ideas, concepts and experiences of their reading.

In learning partners that involve students to work in pair is a significant example of the social interaction that provide supportive learning environment for students. By doing this activity, students may respond to each other in their dialogue journals, share their writings, discuss what they have read and recommend books to each other. All these approaches may be helpful in order to enhance the understanding and perception towards literature.

Selecting YAL

How to select YAL? How can we take into consideration about which book should we use and which we shouldn’t? In that case, I prefer to refer to Brown & Stephen model for selecting YAL. There are 3 major parts that need to be considered to select a YAL; the text, which refers to the quality of the book, the audience, which refers to the students’ need and interest and the context, which refers to curriculum specification. Based on these 3 major criteria the decision can be made. Other minor criteria that also need to be considered would be the language use, characters, coherent, significant themes, appropriate settings and reasonable conflict and issues.

‘Beethoven in Paradise’ would be suitable to fulfill these criteria. It shows what is really happening in the real-life where usually a father sometimes choose to push their children doing something they don’t like at all. The Chocolate War (1974) is also meets these criteria where in this story adolescents are drawn to a group such as football team, a clique or a gang at school that terrorizes, dominates or excludes others. There are many conflicts involved and of course the fast-paced action and suspense will attract the young adult.

Even though I’m a fan of Christopher Pike I would not suggest his book to be selected as the young adult literature, especially the ‘Last Vampires’,’Creatures of Forverer’ and ‘Whisper of Death’. I admit that all those stories are very interesting and full of horror and suspense but it might be not suitable to be used as the formal literature book. But I won’t forbid any of my students to read it if they want to read a different genre books.

Teacher Roles

‘Observant, not judgmental, recommend and supportive, accessible’

As far as I could remember, I don’t remember any teacher from kindergarten until my secondary school that was teaching me literature. But I would like to imagine what if I have one and what if I’m going to teach literature to my students. Therefore, those are the list of qualities that I feel a literature teacher should have. If I were to put myself into the shoes of the students and walk with the shoes, I would be very grateful if I have a teacher who can encourage me to read a lot. Not just the book that has been selected by the curriculum but to any other books. This is because I believe that all the knowledge can be accessed through reading. This has been stated in Al Quran where the first message sent by God was “Iqra’” which means reading. Based on my beliefs, there are whole lot of knowledge and information in the world and in order to access to it is by reading.

A part from that, of course I would be happy if my teacher let me to choose my own reading, does not limit my reading only to certain authors, themes or genres. It will be a bonus if he can provide me tips on how to enjoy my reading because sometimes the book selected for the curriculum purposes are quite dull and boring.

On the other hand, if I were to put myself to be the literature teacher, I will encourage my students to link and connect whatever they read to their real-life. Like I said, I believe that every student should read and write for authentic purposes. The student can reflect their reading sometimes from personal experience and sometimes from imagined experienced. I would also assist my students to find the books that speaks to them and try to help them to progress from the reading which can promote reflection and beneficial to their human growth.

Judy Blume

Judy Blume is a good writer for young adult books. I think that the format of the story made it very easy to read and understand. Sometimes when I read that book I felt my heart is racing because I feel so involved and suspense. The story also very authentic where it really reflects the American young adult real-life. The language is contemporary and simple where it uses the kinds of language, which is usually being heard in movie.

From the books I got the knowledge about other cultures and norms, as well as how the young adult view the world. The characters have flows like a normal person. I believe that such book can help young adult to grow in and understanding other cultures better. In teaching young adult, this kind of book can help the young adult to make sense out of the world as well as establish a communication between the imagination of the reader and what the writer is trying to show in the book. I only read ‘Tiger’s Eyes’ where it is a story about a young adult whose father is dying. I don’t really remember the plot but what do I remember is the story is really sad and made my cried! Dr Edwin told me about her book 'Forever'but I couldn't find it in Kuantan. I wish I will find that book later.

For those who are interested in Judy Blume , you may visit www.judyblume.com/

Range and diversity of readers

Malaysian teachers are facing a challenging condition where they have to deal with multi races and multi cultures students. At the same time, they have to follow the instruction as well as the curriculum specification. Even though they are stick with the curriculum, a teacher can still encourage his or her students to read widely and choose their own book.

During the while reading, teachers can ask students to write about their reading and use their reading to connect with others. I believe whatever the level of the student, each student would read and write for authentic purposes. This kind of activities will encourage students to become cooperative and involved in the discussion.

It also shows that there is interaction between reading young adult literature and writing that took place in the classroom. From the process of sharing, other students will get the benefits when they listen to other cultures or norms. Teacher can also provide range of learning experience with the young adult literature selected. And dealing with multiracial and multicultural needs teachers to be more sensitive and concern about their diversity of levels, background, economic status and beliefs. And to meet this challenge is to re examine the roles that a teacher has in creating a positive environment for student involvement with reading

Sharing

Teacher should give opportunities to students to share their reading with their friends. By sharing, students gain understanding of their teacher’s interest and reading preferences. Students share feelings and experience with their friends. By listening to others, a student can know others’ experiences and what do they feel about the book they read.

There are many ways of sharing that involves articulating, clarifying and verifying. During the articulation, students express their thoughts and beliefs about the book they have read. Then they clarify and verify their thoughts within the context of their own value systems. A teacher can ask authentic questions based on the book. For example “Do you want to have Sean’s fathers to be your father? Why?” This kind of questions may lead them to think critically and provide their own answers and opinion, not just answering yes and no. This kind of questions also will enable students to talk to their experience as well as relate the literature with their real-life situations. They may link it by using the elements of the literature; analyze the genre, author, topic, themes and issues.

Christopher Pike

Christoper Pike is a good writer for young adult books. I think that the format of the story made it very easy to read and understand. Sometimes when I read that book I felt my heart is racing because I feel so involved and suspense.

The story also very authentic where it really reflects the American young adult real-life. The language is contemporary and simple where it uses the kinds of language, which is usually being heard in movie. From the books I got the knowledge about other cultures and norms, as well as how the young adult view the world.

The characters have flows like a normal person. I believe that such book can help young adult to grow in and understanding other cultures better. In teaching young adult, this kind of book can help the young adult to make sense out of the world as well as establish a communication between the imagination of the reader and what the writer is trying to show in the book. But his books requires a lot of imagination and I usually ask myself ‘is this story true?’ or ‘is it really human meant to be eaten by other human?’. But ‘Weekend’ and ‘Chain Letter’ are among his books I like very much