Big Chunk/Little Chunk Chapter Four

I really enjoyed this chapter. In my placement my host teacher lectures primarily; there is very little student centered learning. This seems to be an issue. The students are spending too much time listening to her talk about the subject at hand instead of working collaboratively in order to develop those crucial critical thinking skills. I love that Gallagher talked about Nancy Atwell's roles of a teacher: "mentor, mediator, and model." I hope to be all three to my students in the future. I do not want to be that talking head at the front of the classroom; I want to be in the trenches of learning with my students. Gallagher also discusses "framing" and giving a lense to students before they start a reading assignment. By framing the text you are giving the students a purpose for reading it and guiding them down a particular path, especially when working with those difficult texts. "By the nature of their difficulty, they require a teacher's presence, and if readicide is to be avoided, this presence should be asserted before students encounter page one. (Just one of the reasons I do not like hard/difficult texts assigned for summer reading.) Give a lense for students like, "pay attention to symbolism," so that they can place their efforts of understanding to one particular literary aspect instead of trying to find every little thing or not paying attention at all.

I also enjoyed the tips he gave for close reading:
1. Read with a pencil in hand to annotate the text (I write in books all the time)
2. Look for patterns--repetitions, contradictions, and similarities.
3. Ask questions about the patterns you noticed--especially how and why.

I will be using the tips with the 9th graders, who are now doing a close reading of certain sections of To Kill a Mockingbird.

The best way to teach these BIG novels or canonical texts is BIG chuck/little chunk: look at the text as whole...what meaning get you glean? and then look at some of the most important little parts to see how they relate to the whole!

I LOVE LITERATURE! and Kelly Gallagher gives very realistic and useful tips!