General Literary Knowledge & Strategies

“Why should I care about this stuff anyway? It’s ancient history, and it doesn’t have anything to do with my life.”

You will likely hear this comment more than once in your teaching career. Just as math teachers must suffer through students’ protestations that geometry has no bearing on their life, so must literature teachers listen to students complain about how poetry or fiction is useless outside of the classroom. It’s your job to prove them wrong.

First, counter their protestations by informing them that the literature you’re teaching them has withstood the test of time.

Point out that all literature is connected by common themes.

• The quest theme is a plot device often found in fiction. The quest involves the main character’s search for a particular object or person. Some famous quests include that of Gilgamesh, who seeks to discover the secret to eternal life. Another quest tale is found in Homer’s The Odyssey, which in part tells the story of Odysseus, who encounters many dangers on his quest to return home. The quest is seen throughout contemporary fiction, too. You can point out to your students that J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer are quest tales.
• The creation myth is another common literary theme. This type of myth deals with humanity’s need to find meaning in a world of unknowns. The mark of a creation myth is its focus on describing how the world came into being so, naturally, most creation stories have religious or spiritual associations. One example of a creation myth is Milton’s Paradise Lost.
• Finally, a common literary device involves the act of naming. The name that a character is given can alert the reader to expectations for that character within the work. In Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, the fourth chapter of the book is called “My Name.” In this chapter Esperanza discusses the many meanings and images that surround her name and her hope to rename herself something that will feel more fitting to who she is. Also in Chinua Achebe’s novel Anthills of the Savannah, the characters perform symbolic acts related to naming during the course of the narrative. In the novel, the character Beatrice appropriates the naming ritual and takes it upon herself to name her child. The second symbolic act occurs when she gives her female child a male name. This action is significant because Beatrice appropriates a role that had previously only been assigned to males. Beatrice’s action allows for an injustice to be corrected, which brings an element of redemption to the novel.You can discuss the significance of naming with your students in class by asking them to make connections between names in books and the characteristics they exhibit. You could also extend your discussion to include other books, movies, or even popular music that has significance regarding names.

In the classroom, include activities that connect themes, characters, and history from whatever book you are reading to accompanying projects. These activities should trigger understanding of the experiences within the text while reinforcing vocabulary, themes, and character study. Encourage students to see that their lives and the lives of the characters they read about aren’t so different.

For instance, if you’re studying Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book Little House on the Prairie, you could encourage students to make the connection between the family’s struggle to make a life for themselves on the prairie and contemporary immigration stories. If you have students in class who have moved to the United States from another country, encourage them to tell their story. You can create maps that trace people’s journeys from other countries or other states, or try one of the following:

• Have students interview family members to gather stories of travel or migration
• Have students research other people’s stories and write creative stories based on their research
• Write papers that compare and contrast the dangers of immigrating or making arduous journeys in the past with the dangers of doing the same thing today

Similar activities can be devised with other texts you study. These activities will build bridges between the literature you teach and the students’ lives. Offering access to periodicals that tell similar stories is also a good strategy for making these connections.

Revisiting Independent Reading

As briefly discussed above, independent reading should be used as a tool to increase a student’s vocabulary, but that’s hardly the limit of the pursuit’s advantages. Reading is a pleasurable experience and should be taught in a manner that allows students to have fun with it. Researchers have shown that students who begin reading a book in school are more likely to continue reading outside of school. As previously mentioned, independent readers have a much higher success rate at learning and absorbing new vocabulary. It’s essential that teachers find strategies to encourage students to read recreationally. Here are some suggestions for teachers who are looking for new activities to get students involved in reading and writing outside of school:

• News reading and writing —Have students read a newspaper article at home and write a one-page short story based on what they read.
• Journal writing —Have students begin a journal that chronicles their outside reading and their reactions to the texts.
• Fiction writing using characters from an independent reading text —Encourage students to take characters from a book they’re reading and use them in their own short stories.
• In-class lending library —Keep a shelf of titles in your classroom that aren’t required on any of the reading lists. Mix classic texts with more contemporary novels or short story collections that students may be more attracted to. You can even include graphic novels (collected comic books) that are recognized as having literary merit. Your aim is to provide a wide range of books so that each student in the class is able to find something he or she would enjoy reading.
• In-class periodical lending library —Stock this “library” with periodicals that have literary or educational merit. See if you can get donations of magazines such as Science, National Geographic, The Sun, The New Yorker, Harpers, Time, Utne, and others that will help your students learn about the world while improving their reading skills.
• Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) —Set aside a block of time each day for quiet reading in class after other activities have been completed. This is a great way to encourage your students to read on their own.
• Weekly book discussions —Organize students into groups and encourage them to discuss the books they’ve been reading. These discussions help students analyze texts, but they also provide an opportunity for peer recommendations of books that other students are curious about.

Review

In this section, we learned strategies to increase students’ vocabularies, as well as ways to make sure that students are getting the vocabulary lessons they need. We also reviewed ways to connect literature with students’ lives, and how to encourage students to become lifelong readers. All of these strategies will help your students achieve higher success rates in learning literature, vocabulary, and English in general.