Engaging Readers ’ Intellect and Affect: New Approaches to Reader Response

1. Engaging Readers’ Intellect and Affect: New Approaches to Reader Response Prof. Laura B. Soldner Department of English Northern Michigan University Marquette, MI 49855 lsoldner@nmu.edu

2. The Location • NMU, a rural, regional public university on southern shores of Lake Superior • F’14 Undergrads = 8000 Grad. Stud. = 780 • Full time = 87.5% • Nontraditional = 16.9% • Commuters = 62% • ACT = 22.6/GPA = 3.2 • Caucasian = 85%

3. The Course • EN 110, Good Books, a 16-week introductory humanities course for “the general reader” • Designed to give “insights into the human experience” • Readings: Faculty-selected, nonfiction

4. EN 110, Good Books Objectives Book #3 • Making Meaning from Reading by Writing • Improving Engagement and Motivation • Fostering Classroom Community • Promoting Self-Determination in Learning

5. Reader Response Theory • Rosenblatt (1983) reader response theory – reader and text must transact; this intermingling is a creative act. • Reader should: • live through reading (evocative) • consider perspectives (alternatives) • apply experience to own life (reflective thinking) • make judgments about value (evaluation)

6. Why Reading Reflections? • Provides learners with the tools to develop metacognitive awareness or to “think about thinking” (Soldner, 1997) which promotes students’ affective as well as cognitive growth • Further, educators gain “important information about how students are feeling about reading and learning” (Soldner, 2003). • Hong-nam (2011) asserts that rather than maintaining a passive approach to reading, students must develop a sense of “learner agency”

7. Sample Reading Reflection

8. Sample Synthesis of Students’ Comments Peer-Generated Comments from Autobiography of a Face – Part I Class Connection In my Microeconomics class we had just gone over how Franklin D. Roosevelt mad e this proclamation (There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”) regarding the Great Depression… Lucy’s mom was like Roosevelt. Hayden  Media Connection This (book) reminds me of a show that came out last year… The Red Band Society and it follows a group of kids who live in the hospital. Peter H. Revisiting the Book Cover and “I Was Ugliness” (p. 7)  This quote summarizes a lot of the author’s childhood after cancer, I think. It also serves to partially explain what the cover picture might mean. Perhaps in covering the girl’s face, the author is attempting to portray the opposite of what she believe for the first part of her life – that she is her face, that she is ugliness – and instead point out that her disfigured appearance does not define her… I feel that perhaps we need to read further in order to find all the hidden meanings in the cover picture. David W Lesson in Relation to “Underestimating Our Effect on Other People” (p. 65) I was terribly oblivious of this reality for many years, thinking that others would always dismiss offhand comments as easily as I uttered them. But like Lucy, I found out the truth was very different. The realization… was a profound moment… Bill Lessons in Relation to “Things… to keep from other people.” (p. 35) In the past books we’ve recently read… you just do not know nor can you understand what goes on behind closed doors. Every single family has its own issues and hardships whether people decide to talk about them or keep them private. Lexi 

9. Making Meaning from Reading by Writing • Learning then is not reduced to a plethora of terms, facts, and definitions to be memorized from a book or an overhead (Bean, 2000; Fecho, 1998)

10. I remember John Keats (Lucy refers to “Ode to a Nightingale” on p. 189) being very depressed. Lucy has a dark story to share and is similar to Keats. Both were often sick. Keats died of TB and was ill as a child like Lucy though she died of an overdose. Keats talks about the nightingale being an analgesic… Lucy, more literally than Keats, uses her horses as a distraction to keep the pain away. Karson (2/24/15)

11. Improving Engagement and Motivation • Guthrie (1996) found that literacy engagement fosters self-direction. Engaged readers: • Read and write for personal reasons, • Follow their interests, and • Share their discoveries and enthusiasm with others.

12. I did a little bit of research about this type of cancer (Lucy Grealy’s Ewing’s sarcoma in Autobiography of a Face) because I wasn’t too sure what it was… Cassie (2/17/15) r.

13. Personal Connection • Myers’ (1992) and Rojewski’s (1996) research suggest connecting to students’“personal literacies” enhances engagement and learning.

14. This (Lucy carrying around “pretentious” books by Russian authors) made me laugh out loud, simply because I didn’t realize that this was a thing that anyone else had done. When I was a kid, I didn’t “get” other kids. So, at recess I took to carrying around books and reading them tucked away in a corner, hair pulled around me like a shield. Fiona (2/24/15)

15. Meaningfulness • Banks (1991), Langer (1984), and Phelps & Hanley-Maxwell (1977) found that readers become independent and engaged when learning is personally relevant and meaningful.

16. Being from Ishpeming (a small town outside of Marquette) the past four years have been quite tragic… Too many young deaths have overwhelmed us. It felt like when we finally started to process some healing, another tragedy would occur, and, like Lucy, we would be right back to where we started. Lorrie (2/25/15)

17. Fostering Classroom Community • Gambrell (2000) states that through reading, writing, and discussion, • The “room grows larger” and fosters the development of a community of readers and writers. (p. 547), • Learners “expect and respect differences” (p. 547), and • Learners are always “on the verge of learning something new” (p. 551).

18. So I don’t know if I am able to do this or not, but I am choosing not to reflect on the second half of the book but rather on the death of the author. The girl that sits next to me in class informed me that Lucy died because of an overdose… While I am not a drug user or abuser, I have experience some addictions in my life I wish to share with you. Cole (2/24/15)

19. Sense of Community Impacts Reading • According to Guthrie, Schafer, Wang, & Afferbach (1995), when students are enveloped in the “social milieu” of the classroom community, their amount and depth of reading increases (p. 416).

20. This class, these books, and our discussions are really opening up my mind to things I never really realized were wrong in our world. Lucia (2/24/17)

21. Promoting Self-Determination in Learning • Guthrie (1996) found that literacy engagement fosters self-direction. Engaged readers: • Read and write for personal reasons, • Follow their interests, and • Share their discoveries and enthusiasm with others.

22. I wanted to know more about what (Lucy) was going through so I started looking online for reasons and came across an illness, body dysmorphic disorder. Most of the people with the disorder are obsessed with looking at their imperfections With Lucy, it’s the opposite. She purposely avoided looking in the mirror. She may not have this disorder, but I do believe that she has some type of disorder with her self-image. Cory (2/24/15)

23. Power of Reading Reflections • Collins (1997) asserts that reading reflections or logs: • Provide an “explicit learning mechanism,” • Help learners “extract the maximum knowledge or understanding” from the reading, and • Enhance discussion and analysis (p. 36).

24. Making Meaning by Writing I feel that writing the reflections gave me a deeper connection to the texts we read. We create our own meaning as we read, and reflections give us a chance to connect with the text on a higher level. When we have the opportunity to relate our reading material to our own lives, the lives of our classmates, and the lives of the characters in our book, this creates a unique experience for all of us as readers. It helps us retain information, and, therefore, expand our own thinking. Janell

25. Learner Engagement When an author writes a book on something you can relate to, that’s when you truly understand what he or she is saying. It wasn’t until A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins that I actually started writing what I thought. Up until that time, I really only took a couple of quotes from the book and elaborated on them. After Jenkins’ book, I found it a lot easier to relate to the other books, therefore, giving me a much deeper reason to dissect and reflect on the reading. Grant

26. Classroom Community At times some of our classmates’ reflections shocked us because we had no idea of the experiences other people have had. In this respect, the reflections helped stifle our ignorance about certain subjects. Hearing the reflections of other students gives us the chance to take a new perspective and, therefore, to see the text and ourselves in many different ways. Sabrina

27. Self-Determination I was able to answer some of my own questions through reflections. I took the time to think about what I just read in order to write a reflection. I would never have picked apart these books if I didn’t write reflections. Tracy

28. Reflection: A “Transformative Power” (Soldner, 2005) At the beginning of the semester, I feel as if I was not giving the reflections my all, only looking at the surface of things I read. I was not really exploring the text or exercising my brain. Now, when I look over the reflections that I wrote at the end of semester, I see I spent more time analyzing things, thinking about them and putting more of a personal touch on them… Erin R.

29. Directions How to Do Weekly Reading Reflections The purpose of your weekly Reading Reflections is to allow you to engage deeply with the readings in a personal as well as intellectual manner. Please use any of the following prompts to begin your weekly 750-1000 word reading reflections.Please follow sample, given out and discussed in class, using 10 point, Times New Roman font. When you comment on a passage or phrase, be certain to put the extracted portion in quotation marks or, if it is longer than two sentences, set it apart as a single-spaced and indented section. You may also feel free to begin by connecting your reflection to comments made in class, material you’ve encountered in discussions or additional research, and the like. Some Sample Reading Reflection Prompts You Can Use • In my reading, I noticed that… • Based on previous experiences I have had… • In my opinion, I believe (or you can insert other words like think, believe, agree, etc.) … • I feel (insert an emotion word like sorry, upset, frustrated, confused)…. • I wonder (or insert imagine, visualize, conjecture)…. • This section reminds me of… • This reading connects to my other class because… • The author’s (language, imagery, tone, examples, etc.) in this section… • From additional research I have done this week (name and/or include the source of your information), I found out that…

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