In November, I posted about ways to make sure that you’re choosing texts for your classroom that allow for an engaging and diverse learning environment. This week, I’m back to tackle ways to incorporate student choice into your book list. Throughout my time teaching children’s and young adult literature courses, students have consistently given me positive feedback on the ways that I allow them to pursue their interests and have agency over their readings.
Below I discuss ways that you can incorporate choice into both weekly book choices and major classroom assignments. I also provide suggestions for how to lesson plan around a class where students come in having read different novels.
Weekly Assignments
Throughout the course of the semester, I include a couple weeks where students can choose between two or three novels around the same themes and ideas. For instance, I’ve had classes choose between History is All You Left Me (Silvera, 2017) and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Sáenz, 2012). Both books feature Latino gay boys and the intersections of sexuality, culture, and sense of self. I’ve also had great success with letting students choose between several romance novels: in the past, I’ve offered Eleanor and Park (Rowell, 2012), The Selection (Cass, 2012), and Beautiful Disaster (McGuire, 2011). These texts vary widely in their interpretation of romance for adolescent—or “new adult” as Beautiful Disaster is considered—audiences, but each encourages students to consider the role of women and patriarchy within so-called “chick-lit”.
Having the class come in with different readings prepared offers a couple of benefits. First, you don’t have to choose between two books you love that fit within the same niche. Second, I’ve found that including multiple books allows for nuanced conversation and analysis when you have students talking across books. Hearing their peers discuss texts in this this cross-conversation even convinces students to read extra books. A miracle!
In the past, when I’ve assigned multiple novels, I have had some minor classroom disasters. Here are some examples of those missteps and planning I do now to assure that the period goes well:
First, I make students sign up their book choice. This is not something I coordinate, but having rough numbers of how many will be reading each text allows me to make sure I’m planning an activity that can allow for cross-book conversation effectively. One semester I had only one student read an option, meaning that he spent the class listening rather than contributing to discussions of the other two books. Now I have a sign-up sheet that has a maximum number of slots for each book so that I have at least a small group per book.
Next, I assign one article that relates to all of the texts discussed. In the past, when I’ve attempted multiple articles that are paired with each book, it confused students, with some reading the wrong article and not seeing the connections. Additionally, when they were in groups with those that did not read the same articles, the majority of students—rather than teaching each other from the article—focused solely on the novels, meaning their conversations were less productive. Now, I stick to one article for all novels. For instance, in discussing romance, I’ve had success with the online magazine article “Why must we hate the things teen girls love?” (Jones, 2012) which is an informal way to introduce the repression of women both within society and YA literature. Through assigning a common article, students have a shared foundation and can work to compare the individual books they read.
Finally, I plan discussions that give students time to engage with both those who read the same book and those that did not. In deciding on activities is where the pre-planning in from before comes in handy. For instance, if I know I have roughly the same number of people reading three different texts, I can have them start at tables with peers who read the same novels and give them a set of questions to consider. Then I can have them jigsaw into a group with people who read a different text to discuss some of the larger ideological and societal issues they see across the books.
I have also done activities where, as a group, students who read the same book come up with a mini-lesson plan (about 10 minutes) using a page or passage from their book that they then have to teach to others who didn’t read their text. Again, this allows for cross-book understanding and helps the pre-service teachers think practically about how texts might be used in their future classrooms. Additionally, for students who aren’t educators, this cultivates skills of presenting ideas and concepts to others.
Major Assignments
In addition to incorporating choice into weekly readings, I also encourage students to follow their interests through major assignments. For both their mid-term and final project, I allow them to choose their own book and topic and relate it to concepts from class.
For their mid-term, the students in my children’s literature survey course are required to give a 10 minute presentation about the construction of children and childhood in novels for young readers. They incorporate one novel we’ve read as a class and one additional novel of their choosing. I tell my students to think of something they are interested in or something they loved as a child and use that as a guide to finding a book to discuss. Because of this focus on their interests, I’ve found that even students who aren’t as excited about giving a presentation are able to find something they enjoy discussing and take ownership over some aspect of children’s literature.
A few semesters ago, I had a student who did not participate in full-class discussions and whose observations in small groups showed that she read the texts, but was not analyzing beyond plot, despite all my best efforts. For her presentation, she read a book she liked from her own childhood. In her presentation, she compared the construction of childhood to that of The Tale of Despereaux (DiCamillo 2003), which we read as a class. During her talk, she admitted that she hadn’t truly understood the idea of how children and childhood can be “constructed” until she sat down to closely compare two different representations. Following that class period, she spoke up more and her critical analysis skills improved.
Allowing choice of readings can allow students to feel agency over their learning because they are able to direct the course of the class. For pre-service teachers, this mode of teaching models the tried-and-true method of literature circles for enchanced student engagement and grasp of material. For other students, they are able to see ways which the ideas in youth literature (and literature more broadly) can be applied to other fields as a way to discuss societal ideologies and virtually any topic.
I have also found that these options provide some fun teaching moments, such as discussing the role of sex and sexuality across romance books that take very different approaches to how sex is incorporated. Certainly, it can increase the pressure put on you for prepping the class, but I have found that once you get used to navigating the variety in the classroom, it becomes quicker and a fun change of pace.
I’ll be back again later this semester thinking about how to choose articles!
Imagination and Inquiry 