Fresh Takes on Teaching Literary Elements: How to Teach What Really Matters About Character, Setting, Point of View, and Theme

Over the summer, I tend to order a few professional development books to help spark some creativity in my teaching. At this past year's NCTE, I heard the authors speak of their upcoming book,  Fresh Takes on Teaching Literary Elements: How to Teach What Really Matters About Character, Setting, Point of View, and Theme  and decided to order it as one of my summer reads.Overall, I'm impressed with what Smith and Wilhelm have done in their book. They call for some great educational practices, such as establishing context and purpose for instruction, the idea of transfer between the classroom and life, and the use of essential questions to help guide instruction. They go into great detail about how to approach the elements of characterization, setting, point of view, and theme. Each section contains some great examples of how to introduce and practice these elements in your classroom. I'm especially impressed with the activities on characterization and setting.However, I do have a slight complaint about the book, which is its absence of plot structure. Looking at the end section, the authors give some cryptic remark about how they felt like plot isn't a transferable area...in fact, I think they actually say they are "stumped" as to how to teach plot. I understand that each plot is unique in its own way, but every story (with few exceptions) contains an exposition, conflict, climax, and resolution (if not, the sequel). They are right in stating that some stories do not contain denouement, but I can only think of one novel that doesn't fit into a typical plot structure: Finnegan's Wake. Conflict is a huge part of the end of year test where I teach and I would have liked to see the authors gather more data for how effective teachers teach plot so they could have added it to this great book. I teach plot as part of my fiction unit and I can't tell you how many students come to me after seeing a movie or reading a book and say, "I saw the Triangle" while reading (that is, Freytag's Triangle). How's that for transferability?In closing, I'm a tad confused at the conclusion section that calls for standards-based instruction. I agree with teaching the standards, but I'm curious what standards lend themselves to creating essential questions such as, "What is a hero?" Maybe it's just where I teach, but there are no standards that can be molded into those types of questions...my standards are more about skills with what students can do (recognize and evaluate author's purpose, create and sustain an argument, etc.). I would have liked to see some more detail as to how the authors create their essential questions from their standards.

Literary analysis? The very words fill students with dread. They also send said students diving for the mouse and the monitor to hunt up SparkNotes or some other site designed to do the thinking for them.Jeffrey Wilhelm and Michael Smith show that there is a better way. Through inquiry, they launch units with essential questions tailored to the literature in question (e.g. "What makes a good father/friend/hero/teacher?") followed by opinionnaires that invite students to share opinions on issues relevant to the text about to be read. From there, they show you how to follow up with activities designed to be used both during and after the book (or short story, poem, play, etc.).The number one question teachers ask of a professional development book is what its theory-to-practicality ratio is. Here the theory is posited early and briefly. From there, the authors launch into chapters devoted to four areas: character, setting, point of view, and theme. In addition to their own ideas, Wilhelm and Smith share other researchers' ideas and leaven the mix with plenty of reproducible pages that are both high-interest AND rigorous. If you teach and feel like you've beat your head against the wall trying to get students to see beyond the superficial and the surface items in literature, you owe this book a test drive. Don't expect to be returning it to the dealer, either.

This book is an eye opener into literary analysis. Although I had already been approaching my units on fiction in a similar fashion to the authors' advice here, its explanations on character, setting, point of view, and theme are quite substantial and meaningful. I do remember the first time I approached teaching literature in a traditional way, through definitions, and now I wish I had had this type of guidance then. The chapter that I found most useful was the one on point of view. Even though I had figured out on my own the meaningful teaching of character, setting, and theme, I always wondered about the first person and third person distinction. I've seen these exercises and they just don't make sense to me. This text certainly clarified this important aspect and it will be helpful in crafting guiding questions for my lessons.Teachers should also note their explanations on why they didn't explore in depth the concepts of plot and conflict. And I agree with them. After all, you have to deal with these concepts when discussing the other four elements. Character, setting, point of view, and theme are at the essence of literary understanding.

I have been assigned chapters to read, but have found myself reading the entire text. I am a teacher, and have been for almost 20 years, but am learning from this text. The ideas provided are clear and examples are provided. Wilhelm does draw in other researchers in literacy; some with whom I agree, others not-so-much, but that's what I like. I want to be able to go into a text and be able to have critical discussion with the text. If you are a reading teacher with teens and above, I suggest you read this book. There are ready-made lesson plans provided that are worth trying.

I wish the handouts in the book were typed so I could use them more easily - a lot of the book is formatted in a way that isn't super accesible. However, the concepts and lesson ideas are great, and I used a lot of ideas from this book for my Creative Writing class.

It is somewhat a little too sophisticated for my ESL students, but overall great content and lots of activities to use with my ELA students.

After teaching middle school English for many years now, I found this book to be a fresh take on teaching literary elements. It gives activities to do with your students prior to teaching the element. It also delves into the reasoning behind the element, thus giving context to the student. Literary elements can be bland for students to learn, and I've found this book gives excitement to this learning process! Highly recommend!