My language arts class is reading We Were Not Alone by Patricia Reece Roper and Karola Hilbert Reece. The students are writing stories from their lives containing symbolism and showing a time they were courageous. We are discussing the elements of story such as character, description using the five senses, and discovering the main character's need or want. Yesterday I made a connection with one of the student's symbols and saw how it related to the story in a deep way. Then I thought about the symbols chosen by the other students and I was thrilled at how a simple symbol makes deeper meaning in a story.
Why can’t students just read for pleasure?
I love to read what I want to read. My high school-aged daughter also loves to read books she chooses. But she dislikes analyzing literature and writing a literary analysis. I wrote a literary analysis for the language arts class I teach, and it was painful to write. So why do we study literature and analyze it? Do we cause children to dislike literature because we make them study it? I hope not. When we read and analyze literature, we make connections within ourselves and to the outside world. As I analyze stuff in literature like symbolism, theme, character, and archetypes, I make deeper connections. I've enjoyed reading the five books in the curriculum for my spring semester class and analyzing them. I've also learned so much as a writer about technique and excellent writing. Maybe students won't appreciate it now, but if they ever teach a language arts class, they'll experience pleasure in analyzing literature.
Waxing eloquent
I teach a high school language arts class on-line and today I graded the literary analysis papers for The Virginian by Owen Wister. The students did an excellent job choosing themes and supporting their thesis statements with examples. I intensely added comments about past and present tense and proper use of quotes among other things. By the time I sent back their papers, I’d marked up a lot of things. So, today in class I waxed eloquent (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase) about the privilege of having one teacher for five students and how the revision process is a great learning experience. After my lengthy and inspiring speech, one of the students asked, “So, you want us to correct the papers and turn them back in?” Yeah, that ‘s what I meant.