Interview with a past classroom teacher/current administrator

I chose a fellow colleague that I respect and admire to interview and ask these critical literacy questons to.

Here are the questions & her responses:
1. What role does literature play in the classroom curriculum?

A very central role – the best way to increase reading achievement is to get kids reading. In order to get kids reading, you have to get them excited to read. The job of a teacher is to hook kids into books and teach content standards by using the literature as a vehicle. That is, you don’t teach a book – that’s an activity (I often hear teachers say, “this unit we are reading X book”). Rather, you use the book to achieve learning outcomes – such as exploring how characters change over time by reading X books. You don’t want kids just to finish a book – you want them to read in order to think deeply and to use the reading as a model for their own writing in order to help them become better writers. And you don’t want kids to finish a 5-paragraph essay – rather, you want them write a strong literary essay with a compelling thesis, supporting details, and commentary. Teachers should help students learn to read but are also responsible for helping students read to learn!

I recently heard a KIPP teacher talk about a current 8th grade student who is a struggling reader. The student has been at KIPP since 5th grade and his decoding and fluency has improved dramatically. However, he continues to struggle with reading comprehension and mastery of reading standards. Recently in his English class, he has been reading The Giver and has really “gotten it” because the teacher has been highlighting the role of relationships as the central theme of the book. Because this student plays a central care-taking role in his family, he “gets” relationships and, as a result, can really connect to the book. That is the power of literature and good teaching – it can hook kids in to learning and school when they have otherwise struggled or been unsuccessful in school.

2. What kinds of books are chosen for your classroom?

Books for the classroom library were selected based on student interest and readiness so that students could read books of their choice at their level. Books for shared reading/whole-class texts were selected based on the content standards -- the literacy coordinator, with the English department, mapped curriculum/units based on standards and developed essential questions for those units. We then used the standards and questions and brainstormed different books that addressed those themes. Our units were also chunked by genre.

3. Who decides on what books are used in your classroom?

See above – kids, teachers, and admin

4. What is your theoretical perspective on teaching or specifically on using children's literature in the curriculum?

I think I hit this in #1 – if not, let me know and I will write back.

My reflections:
What I'm hearing is that kids need to be absolutely invested in reading (enjoy it, get excited about it) but also, not jut read a book to finish it, they need to think about, for example, How a character changes over time and read a book that truly and really excellently reflects this. We did an amazing character unit in my 4th grade classroom this year and the Read Aloud was Joey Pigza Swallowed a Key - they LOVED this character and in the end were able to explain how Joey changed over time, but also, how the characters in their reading books changed over time.