The authors begin this section by acknowledging that the purpose of reading response activities is to help students’ access literature and become more capable of understanding and responding to it regardless of their prior knowledge or experiences. This is an excellent philosophy for developing response activities because we do not want to create “superficial” activities, such as the science unit that kicked off with reading Charlotte’s Web. (I actually cringed while reading that). This type of connection complete ignores the coming of age questions that E.B. White’s classic raises and doesn’t engage a connection with the scientific study of arachnids. I want my students to see the connections and be able to have a response not be confused by faulty association.
Giving students opportunities to express themselves in different modes, versus purely writing, helps reinforce how literature and stories can be represented beyond written form. I really enjoy activities such as these because they break the mode for what language arts class is typically thought to be.
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This forced the individuals to see the issue from another perspective. And as a natural devil’s advocate, I was thoroughly engaged by the opportunity to argue for the other side. In terms of literary discussions, this can help students realize how different interpretations can rise out of one text and how each text gives a different meaning to the reader based on the experience and perspective they bring. I also enjoy this because you can allow the students to play off their natural perspective in regards to the story they are reading and then have them reverse that. Also, the emotional responder is an opportunity for the high energy student in the class to get some of their emotional charge