“I believe it is our job not simply to drag students through a series of books but rather to show them how stories work” (Jago 60).
I thought this chapter was interesting because it brought up a lot of useful information about elements of fiction and literary terms. I really like Freytag’s Pyramid to map the important structures in a piece of literature. When I was in high school, I remember having to complete a story pyramid similar to Freytag’s Pyramid. I think it really helps students to visualize what is happening at the moment and where that action falls in a story framework. One of the things I’ve notice as I’ve read this book is that Jago has a lot of information hanging up on giant sheets of paper around the room. She said she has a running list of literary terms posted on her walls in her classroom so students can see it every day. I really like that she did that because I think it exposes the students to those literary terms many more times than they would be otherwise.
One thing that I didn’t like about this chapter is the tone in which she occasionally spoke to the reader. Sometimes I felt like she was talking down to the reader and that annoyed me. What really irritated me though was when she talked about a book about literary terms. She proceeded to then tell me that I need to make sure that the book is returned when I lend it out. It just reminded me of a parent telling a child not to lend something out and it bothered me.
haha I don't really know if I like Jago either, but I do gain a lot from some of the chapters. This one really helped me because it let me see how I can make a text seem somewhat familiar to a student even if it is a difficult classic text. I think that this is important because if a student has no confidence about a piece of text they will shut down and not try to understand any of it.
ReplyDeleteHa! I agree, the tone is a little condescending at times, but hopefully you can find the information helpful!
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