Title: THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE

PRQ: ENGL 200, 9 hours of literature at the 300 and 400 level, and senior standing; or consent of department.

English 479H, the Teaching of Literature, is the companion class to Engl 404, the Teaching of Writing.  Both classes are necessary before one can continue to Engl 480H, Methods, and both build upon the skills and learning you have mastered in your regular liberal arts English classes taken over the last two+ years.   In this class, we will emphasis your internalizing the basics of the three major literary genres of poetry, fiction, and drama, in the order which you will collectively select and based on your own specific needs.  Much of this class will be both theoretical and practical, so once the basics are learned, we will then practice applying them to specific texts, paying attention to objectives that require genre-related skills in order to be able to teach this material to adolescents.  One may quibble with requiring this or that specific skill, but in general these are, in my mind, the sine qua non, as a grounding for good teaching.  Further, I have recommended some types of texts and/or authors and will discuss the reasons for those choices along with the skills needed to decode and then teach them as the semester progresses.

LESSON PLANS:   Much of what we do in Engl 479 will (or should) naturally feed into the work in 480H, just as your learning in Engl 404 will inform your teaching and learning practices in 480H as well.  Because we are developing this class as a companion both to Engl 404 and 480H, you will learn some theory and practice some application (mini-teaching) both here in Engl 479 as then continuing in 480H.  In Engl 479H, you will start, individually and then collectively, with a one-class period (45 to 75 minutes, depending on your student teaching assignment) Lesson Plan (LP) on one of the three genres we will be studying.  You will revise this LP several times, and gradually add another day to make these LPs as a precursor to what you may be asked to write in Engl 480H. 

As each draft of an LP is completed and evaluated by me, that grade will replace the previous one, and your final course grade will be based only on the very last draft of each.  All lesson plans (in final form) must be copied (Xeroxed) for the whole class to share -- that is, a copy of each plan for each student in the class and one of each for me.  These will be due during the last week of the semester.  PORTFOLIOS:  This last draft of your LPs will also go into your T-Cert PORTFOLIO, and portfolios must be acceptably completed before you'll be allowed to go student teaching!   Please follow the directions given to you each semester and be careful to include the worksheet of your progress from each semester of your T-Cert course.  QUIZZES, MINI-LESSONS, and LEARNING LOGS: Many class activities will require YOU to get up in front of the class in smallish groups or alone and actually DO (teach) the materials you are learning.  While Engl 479H will not include as much "stand-up teaching" as 480H, we will do a significant amount of it including some "spontaneous" or "on-the-spot" teaching.  You will be expected at all times to be ready to stand up at a moment's notice and take charge of the class!  Your final course grade will be computed by a) my summary evaluation of the two or more acceptable lesson plans final draft only (40%); b) mini-teaching lessons, any quiz and/or test grades, and learning logs averaged, with the lowest one dropped (25%); c) the quality of your portfolio (25%); and d) my subjective evaluation of your progress during the semester (10%).  

(Required) Foster, How To Read Literature Like a Professor, Quill; Wood, How Fiction Works.  Picador;   Orwell,  Animal Farm, Signet;   Sacher,  Holes;   Homer,  The Odyssey, Fitzgerald Trans., Anchor;  James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, Palgrave;  Hollander, Rhyme's Reason, Yale Paper;  McDonald, Bedford Companion/Shakespeare,  Bedford;  Shakespeare, Julius Caesar and Romeo & Juliet, Arden;   Pritner & Colaianni, How to Speak Shakespeare, Santa Monica P.   VCB Packet:  (available by Tuesday, first week of classes; same Packet both for this section of  Engl 479H and for Engl 648) Recommended: Kahn & Johannessen, Writing About Literature. NCTE, 2nd Ed;  Knapp, Learning From Scant Beginnings: English Professor Expertise (U of Delaware P, 2008);  Kelly Gallagher, Readicide. Stenhouse P,  2009.