More on Purves

I decided in March to go ahead and just read the rest of the book.  It was really inspiring.  I put much of what I learned into practice.  I am going to go back to the book and highlight some notes that I wrote and what I am thinking now.

Highlights on page 64

• If everybody in a group is responding to the same poem, the common point is the poem.
• If a person is responding to a poem, play and a novel, the common point is the person.
• If a group of people are talking about novels they have read, the common points are the language they are using to talk with and the community they enter.

These points are important to me because explicitly state what the focus of the response would be.  It think that is important because sometimes you can get carried away with enthusiasm of the moment and lose the focus. 

I liked the recipe on page 68:

Ingredients:

Take one class of 28 students

Add one literary text written by a real person (and that speaks to the audience)

and one teacher

"
Stir vigorously.  Many, many different outcomes will result.  This is real world reading, writing, listening and speaking.   It is an approach not a curriculum meaning that you can embed this into what you doing in the classroom.  It is a teach style change analogous to lifestyle change.

In a response based approach, the central focus is the experience of the reader with the text and the culture that lies behind and within the text. (Page70)  The transaction continues.  It is the "falling in love" with what you are doing, reading, thinking, writing, relating and gain as a person.

Remember, too, that what is important is not the breadth of coverage, but the depth to which the students explore the works.  Don't worry about covering, worry about digging.  We tend to teach surface instead of going deeper because we are bombarded with state standards that are far and wide.  Sometimes we tend to think of the immensity of the job and then panic.  I would rather go deeper with less then cover more.  It is about the quality.  Again, if there is no transaction, then nothing more can happen.  Even the surface will not do.