Teaching Lit. in S.S. Blog #1 - Takin' it to a higher level

Hello all,

So I've been reading through Jago's, Classics in the Classroom, and came upon something very early on in my reading that I felt was important to address. On just the second page of Jago's book I noted that she was talking about two observers of two different classrooms, and 5th grade and the other 10th, who compared their observations and discovered that they had viewed very similar lessons despite being five grades apart from one another. Jago brings up a good point with this example: too many teachers stick to a very low level of instruction and students very rarely get to exercise higher level processes like analysis or synthesis. So, instead of students getting the chance to develop skills and abilities like analyizing underlying themes, develop opinions of the text, or simply debating in class, students are taught to skim the surface, memorize and then regurgitate, anwser "who went where and did what?" kinds of questions.

To be honest, I don't find it suprising that these are the kinds of things that observers see in the classroom. I realize that a lot of teachers probably don't even realize that they need to take their instruction to a higher level, but I'm also confident that a lot of teachers just don't want to invest the extra energy into taking in to the next level, so to speak. Or, maybe these teachers simply have never heard of Bloom's Taxonomy, but I doubt that. It just erks me I suppose, that something so simple to do- like asking students questions that take a little bit of reflection and thought is too much to ask of some teachers. And like Jago mentions in the book, it's no wonder that students do poorly on standardized reading and writing tests that look for analysis and comprehension of the text.

Yet, what more can I say about it. I can't really change anything about the way things are until it's my turn to teach my own students. That's the thing that I don't understand, though... I'm actually looking forward to trying to get students to really analyze texts like George Orwell's, 1984 and discuss topics from class like, "does having money and status add to the way Daisy and Tom Buchanon live recklessly in Fitzgeralds, The Great Gatsby?" That stuff excites me! Maybe these other teachers have grown just a little too long in the tooth to be effective teacher. But I digress.

So, until next time, this is Sam saying, Thank you and good morning!