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Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents, Second Edition (Language & Literacy Series) (Language and Literacy Series (Teachers College Pr))
Binding: Paperback
Author: Deborah Appleman
Manufacturer: Teachers College Press
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Average Rating: 4.5
Total Customer Reviews: 8
List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $22.45
Sales Rank: 227119
Product Description
''What a smart and useful book! It provides teachers with a wealth of knowledge and material to help their students develop critical perspective and suppleness of thought.''
--Mike Rose, University of California, Los Angeles
This bestseller was the first text to specifically address the challenges of teaching critical theory in high school literature classrooms. Since its original publication, the author has worked with hundreds of teachers and students to update and refine the lessons she presents. This completely revised Second Edition now features:
* A new introductory chapter that focuses on ideology and literary theory.
* A new chapter on using literary theory with diverse learners.
* An expanded discussion of gender, including new activities.
* A reframing of Marxist literary theory.
* A new postcolonial lens that will help students read such classics as Things Fall Apart.
* An amplified focus on cultural texts, with new material on helping students think critically about music videos, websites, advertisements, films, and television shows and two new activities for analyzing a contemporary movie.
* Many new additions to the appendix of activities, including handouts from teachers who have adapted the original activities for use with diverse students.
Praise for the First Edition!
''All the undergraduate students cited [Appleman's book] as their favorite piece of work for the semester, and the one that was most successful during student teaching.'' --English Journal
''This book provides powerful ways to get young people thinking about literature and about how it relates to their lives.'' --Rethinking Schools
''Compelling.'' --Teacher Magazine
''Interesting and provocative''--Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy
''Many teachers have difficulty engaging students in critical analyses of literature because teachers themselves do no know how to use strategies to ease their students into this higher order thinking process. Appleman's text helps teachers understand how and why, 'now perhaps more than ever before, students need critical tools to read the increasingly bewildering and text-filled world that surrounds them,' and provides detailed strategies to guide students' review of literature.''
--Voice of Youth Advocate
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Users Product Reviews: |
Product Review Summary: Useful High School Teacher Ref. This book is a straightforward approach to critical lens theory. It helps the reader grasp the fundamental concepts that are necessary to teach high school and college level students. The activities also are user friendly and easily adaptable to an average ability classroom. Overall, it has easily become my first choice to prepare lesson plans.
Product Review Summary: You Need Not Be a College Student to Learn Theory Mastering Critical theory on a college level is sufficiently imposing so that to learn it on a high school level is seen as even more so. In CRITICAL ENCOUNTERS IN HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH, Deborah Applebaum proves that the teaching of it and the learning of it need not be the insurmountable obstacle that many a harried college student often perceives it to be. Applebaum writes this text for the high school teacher who may not know much more theory than the very students whom she hopes to teach. Until recently, college courses in theory were not required for English majors and even for those who have taken a course or two, this book is a helpful reminder as to what theory is, how to apply it, and perhaps even more importantly, how to justify teaching it to teenagers who already groan under what they will undoubtedly see as simply one more "hard" subject to master in their senior year.
The first chapter, "The Case for Critical Theory in the Classroom," is teacher-oriented in that Applebaum anticipates potential pitfalls for the teacher who wishes to include critical theory in a typical high school curriculum. She acknowledges that there is "tension between presenting literature as cultural artifacts...for those who favor a more progressive approach to education." This tension she suggests can be reduced by forthrightly examining "our notions of what literacy is, of what students should read, and of what it means to read well." Critical theory she sees as the lever by which all this may be done.
In the second chapter, "Through the Looking Glass: Introducing Multiple Perspectives," Applebaum addresses the advantage that theory has over the standard one-size-fits-all paradigm of the typical approach to high school literary analysis that focuses on plot, setting, character, and symbolism. Since theory by its very nature is multi-dimensional, students can benefit by viewing texts under varying lenses, all of which require close reading, resulting in enhanced understanding of that text.
Since this text is designed for high school seniors, Applebaum wisely decided to limit her choices of theory to Reader-Response, Marxism, Feminism, and Deconstructionism. Her analyses and examples of each school are sufficiently clear so that college students who desire a jargon-free text can look here for relief. Applebaum also has a most useful chapter, perhaps even more so for college students, on "Reading the World as Text," where her students describe how they used selected theories to understand articles, movies, books, and advertisements that might have otherwise resisted more conventional approaches. Reading the World is an ambitious undertaking, but Applebaum judiciously shows how high school teachers can expose their students to the literary side of it.
Product Review Summary: Another must-have addition for your shelves! Like Wiggins' book on Essential Questions,Understanding By Design Expanded 2nd Edition Critical Encounters is a book that has changed my approach to teaching. Unlike Understanding by Design, this one applies directly to my role as an English teacher.
There are so few books out there on methodology that combine theory and practice the way that Appleman's book does. It's worth the price for this alone. I agree with another reviewer about the over-emphasis on student work examples and anecdotes (I skimmed over many of these), but the practical strategies and lessons to use with high school English students are invaluable. Most get the students involved and doing the work. These strategies require students to think about what they read and to respond to what they read critically.
If you're tired of the typical Reader-Response papers you've been requiring and/or receiving from students who are capable of much deeper thinking, buy this book!
Product Review Summary: Critical Encounters Book This book is very useful in giving you ideas on how to teach literary theory to those who are unfamiliar with it. The great thing about this text is that the examples they give you can be substituted for any kind of book, whether it is adolescent literature or something in the curriculum that you are teaching. I am enjoying learning about teaching literary theory and I cannot wait to get into the classroom and use some of these ideas with my students!
Product Review Summary: Critical Encounters This book is great for any high school or even middle school teacher looking to include critical theory in the study of literature. Appleman suggests several ways in which students will be able to "put their Ray bans on" while looking at the world.
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