1. Brigham Young University
UCTE 2018
Helping Students Inquire into the Meaning of Literature by Telling Small Stories
Larkin Weyand
Brigham Young University GN

2. Interpret Humpty Dumpty
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses, And all the king's men, Couldn't put Humpty together again.

3. Under-represented narrative activities:
Small Stories
Under-represented narrative activities:
tellings of ongoing events
future or hypothetical events
shared (known) events
allusions to (previous) tellings
(De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2012, p. 116).
Told in the course of everyday talk
(Juzwik & Ives, 2010, p. 41).

4. Rosenblatt’s Transactional Theory
She argued for what she called the transaction between reader and text: “the to-and-fro, spiraling, nonlinear, continuously reciprocal influence of reader and text in the making of meaning” (p. xvi).
The “meaning is not ‘in’ the text or ‘in’ the reader. Both reader and text are essential to the transactional process of making meaning” (p. 27)
--from Literature as Exploration

5. Validate the Difficulties
Why do students find interpreting literature difficult?
Blame Kills Inquiry:
Blame Self: “I’m just not good at English.”
Blame the writer: “Why did he have to write it like that with all those big words?”
Validate the Difficulties
Difficult vocabulary
Difficult stance
Difficult images
Examples from you?

6. From Newkirk & Heaney (1984)
Why do students find interpreting literature difficult?
From Newkirk & Heaney (1984)
Do we give students the wrong impression of “inspired readings” (p. 756)?
Do we hide the struggles of a first reading from our students?
Do we help students deal “with reactions that are not easily resolved into a thesis” (p. 757)?
Do we meet our students with “a prepared reading” (p. 758)?
Do we model that thinking is a process (p. 758)?

7. Small stories as problem-solving
Newkirk & Heaney: “interruption of activity”
Marchetti: “Write. Pause. Write. Pause. Struggle. Write some more.”

8. Small stories of your readings
Reading #1: Identify vocabulary
difficulties.
Reading #2: Work through the problem by
making hypotheses.
Reading #3: Consolidate analyses and
make them go together.

9. “Burning a Book” by William Stafford

10. “Burning a Book” by William Stafford

11. “Burning a Book” by William Stafford

12. Your Turn “Too” or “Double”? Reading #1: Identify vocabulary
difficulties.
Reading #2: Work through the problem by
making hypotheses.
Reading #3: Consolidate analyses and
make them go together.

13. How did it go? Reading #1: Identify vocabulary difficulties.
Work through the problem by making hypotheses.
Reading #3: Consolidate analyses and make them go together.