Using YA Literature to Support Student Literacy Development Dr. Carol Harrell and Dr. Jim Cope English Department Kennesaw State University

Introduction:  “In an ideal literature program," say Joan Knickerbocker and James Rycik, "all students would experience a... curriculum that [would allow] them to grow increasingly fluent as readers, increasingly able to employ the strategies to interpret complex texts, and increasingly willing to read more challenging texts," but...

 No ideal, seamless program exists, so what does that dilemma and that goal assume for the English/Language Arts (ELA) classroom?  As teachers in the ELA classroom, we must know our students. Gilbert and Temple identify stages of reading development that can offer a guide as we consider what might happen in the reading/literature classroom.

Literacy Development: Stage One-Building Fluency:  Students begin to read independently and make gains in their reading rate.  They stop calling words and begin to be readers. Usually, this leap happens in second or third grade, but when that doesn't occur, teachers in middle and secondary classrooms must support fluency development.  One way to support fluency is to allow students to read easy materials. Another way is to read aloud to students.

Stage Two-Reading for Pleasure/ Reading to Learn:  Students build knowledge of the array of vocabulary, sentence structure, and text conventions. They also build background knowledge, which aids future reading.  Explicit instruction in the use of comprehension strategies assists students as they learn to construct meaning from a variety of texts.  In this stage, students need many opportunities to read and engage in response to text-either independently through writing or, especially, orally in groups.

Stage Three-Mature Reading: By this stage of reading, students are ready to-  Learn to argue with text as they become critical readers.  Synthesize content as they begin to read multiple texts on a single topic.  Develop an aesthetic appreciation for text as they develop an artistic stance about text. (Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 46:3 November 2002)

Taste Related to Stages: There is a general pattern of reading tastes during the adolescent period.  The Adolescent Book. "First, young people find their satisfaction in the adolescent book: the book written especially for him, to evoke his emotions, problems, dreams, and life."

 The Popular Adult Book. "Ordinarily, this is the kind of work that is [standardly] on the best seller list.”

 The Serious Contemporary Book. "These are books that appear on college reading lists in courses centering on contemporary literature. They are the ones that critics feel make up the body of contemporary literature and may well live for several hundred years."

 The Classics. "The final step in growth in reading leads the reader to an interest in the classics. Ordinarily, this stage is not reached, save as it is forced on people, much before full maturity."

Why Use YAL in the Classroom:  As students mature in both their reading ability and in their reading tastes, we teachers must be careful that we do not overwhelm our students when we move them from simple to more complex texts and tasks related to those texts.

Cognitive Information Processing Theory:  When presented with competing tasks, learners have "selective attention" and can attend to limited numbers of stimuli coming from the environment or learning task.  The more complex a task is, the more difficulty learners have attending to the task, so pairing a more difficult task with a simpler one reduces task complexity and facilitates the flow of information from short-term to long-term memory-thus improving the likelihood that learning will occur. (Nita Paris, KSU)

How to Use YAL in the Classroom:  Literary Elements: Setting  Bridge Building/Piggybacking  Response Journals  Literary Circles  Alternative Book Reports

Wrap Up:  Questions and Sharing