This article discussed the teaching of literature and making meaning through envisionment-building ("the understanding a reader has about a text--what the reader understands at a particular point in time, the questions she has, as well as her hunches about how the piece will unfold"). I had never heard of the term "envisionment" before reading this article and I think it is a very important concept for the teaching of literature. The article next talked about the four major stances of interpreting a literary text. They are: Being Out and Stepping In, Being In and Moving Through, Being In and Stepping Out, and Stepping Out and Objectifying the Experience. I think that being able to identify these stances would be very helpful to future teachers because they would be able to track their students' progress easier and facilitate class discussions.
I have seen many examples in my field classroom of the stances of interpretation listed above. As I have mentioned before, there are several ELL students in my classroom and a fair ammount of low-level students as well. As discussed in the article, I have noticed that it is easier for these students to get off-task and go on tangents when discussing a literary text than those students who are more proficient in reading. When working with ELL and low-level students, it would be beneficial to have a set of stances to follow or use as a guideline.
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I also like the idea of envisionment. I think it helps students grasp what is being covered. It is an easy way to teach them how to self check what they are reading and if they are understanding it. What worries me is that some students may have trouble with this and might need a little more scaffolding. The struggling readers are the ones that will need the extra support but hopefully this is one way to give them the help they need.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had the experience with this like you, but unfortunately, I've never seen this in any classroom.