Engaging Students with Literature

Engaging Students

with Literature

A Curriculum Module

for AP

English

Literature and

Composition

2010

Curriculum Module

The College Board

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Contents

Introduction

Deborah Shepard ......................................................................4

Standing on Merit: The Role of Quality and Choice in

Student Reading

Barry Gilmore ............................................................................5

Our Zeitgeist: Fighting the White Noise

John Harris ...............................................................................14

Strategies for Engaging Students in an Analysis of

Frankenstein

Julie Dearborn ........................................................................32

About the Contributors ....................................................................38

Engaging Students with Literature

Introduction

Deborah Shepard

The College Board

is Curriculum Module touches upon what is at the heart and soul of AP® English

Literature and Composition: reading and understanding literary works. More specically,

it oers suggestions for how to get your students to read more, how to train them to

evaluate the artistic quality of what they read and how to explore literature more deeply.

In “Standing on Merit: e Role of Quality and Choice in Student Reading,” Barry

Gilmore reveals, “I’m as interested in what texts students choose as I am in how they

discuss those texts. I want to see, in other words, how they handle that one part of the

instructions which may seem to them most tangential, the injunction to choose a work

‘of literary merit.’” He presents a strong case for both directing what students read and for

allowing them latitude in making their own choices of what they read. e balancing act

of helping students learn what denes “literature of merit” while allowing them freedom

to judge for themselves becomes more clear in this article.

John Harris, in “Our Zeitgeist: Fighting the White Noise,” states that “[t]he Zeitgeist

reading and writing project encourages students to read and research a particular era of

history and write a term paper at the end of the spring semester aer the AP Exam.” In

addition to facilitating student engagement with literature of or depicting a particular

era, the project also allows students to discover that literature has more to say beyond the

works themselves; those works can also say important things about the historical contexts

in which they were written.

Julie Dearborn’s article “Strategies for Engaging Students in an Analysis of Frankenstein”

provides a comprehensive unit for teaching that novel. Her primary goal “is for each

student to discover the pleasure of reading a classic novel like Frankenstein,” and she does

so via activities that lead students through a close reading of the novel. Dearborn shares

examples of ways to use small group, whole group and individualized discussions of major

themes and elements of the novel as methods of engaging students in literary analyses.

Engaging Students with Literature

Standing on Merit: The Role of

Quality and Choice in Student

Reading

Barry Gilmore

Lausanne Collegiate School

Memphis, Tenn.

It’s the start of the year in 12th-grade AP English Literature and Composition, and the

students are furiously scribbling their responses to an essay prompt from the 2002 AP Exam:

Oen in literature a character’s success in achieving goals depends on keeping a secret

and divulging it only at the right moment, if at all. Choose a novel or play of literary

merit that requires a character to keep a secret. In a well-organized essay, briey

explain the necessity for secrecy and how the character’s choice to reveal or keep the

secret aects the plot and contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.

e assignment serves as a formative assessment in more than one way. It’s useful, of

course, to see the quality of essays the students produce right o the bat with this sort of

prompt and limited time; much of our work throughout the course focuses on improving

this sort of essay with sophisticated syntax, smoothly incorporated evidence and thorough

analysis. Because of my addendum that the students must write about one of three

texts from their summer reading, the essay serves as a way to check that students have

completed the summer assignment. And the essays are also an immediate, if limited,

gauge of the creativity and depth of thought students bring with them to the study of

literature.

But I’m conducting another assessment, too, one that many students don’t even realize is

a part of the assignment: When I read the essays, I’m as interested in what texts students

choose as I am in how they discuss those texts. I want to see, in other words, how they

handle that one part of the instructions which may seem to them most tangential, the

injunction to choose a work “of literary merit.”

It’s worth discussing why and how students are allowed to choose texts on which to focus;

below, I’ll address the extent to which students need latitude in their reading choices. For

now, suce it to say that in this case the students have considerable autonomy in choosing

texts, as they do on the actual AP Exam. So what constitutes a work of literary merit? In

this particular year, one student writes about Sebold’s e Lovely Bones. Another chooses

Boyle’s e Tortilla Curtain. Some of the choices seem in line with the canonical works

commonly taught in high schools: Tan’s e Joy Luck Club, Dickens’s Great Expectations,

Shakespeare’s Twelh Night, all good choices for this particular question. Others are

contemporary choices and might raise some eyebrows: Setteneld’s Prep, Albom’s e Five

People You Meet in Heaven, even Brown’s e Da Vinci Code.

Engaging Students with Literature

It’s a broad list, and once I’ve collected the essays I oen write all of the titles students have

chosen on the board so that the whole class can see the range of works under discussion.

en I ask the students what they think.

“I’m not sure e Da Vinci Code is really a work of literary merit,” says one student,

frowning at the list.

A boy on the other side of the classroom raises his hand immediately. “I didn’t write about

it, but that was one of the best books I’ve ever read,” he says.

“What makes you say that?” I ask.

“I stayed up all night just to nish it. I couldn’t put it down. It wasn’t just action. ere was

all this history and philosophy and character description. I thought it was great.”

“at just means it’s a page-turner,” says another student. “It doesn’t mean it’s literature.”

And there it is, in a single word: the gulf between what a student might choose to read

and what he or she is told to read, the sense that there is one set of texts that belongs in

the classroom and another that belongs in the bookstore and the backpack. It’s not the

word literature but the pronunciation of it, with its implied hierarchy and judgments, that

drives home to me the contradictory truths with which every English teacher grapples:

On the one hand, students need teachers to guide them through challenging, dicult and

canonical texts that they might not approach on their own; while on the other hand, the

very act of assigning those texts may seem to invalidate the reading choices that students

make on their own.

“So,” I say to the class, “here’s your homework: What makes a novel or play a work of

literary merit?”

Deﬁning Moments

e search for a common denition of literary merit is not a new one. An article in e

English Journal (1928), for instance, described a survey conducted nationwide among

librarians to determine literary merit based on a 100-point scale; in this case, 100

represented the quality of “Shakespeare’s writings” and zero represented the composition

of “an average 6-year-old child just learning to read and write” (Graves 1928, 328). e

small sample of around 60 librarians ranked e Scarlet Letter at 86.7, e Adventures of

Sherlock Holmes at 57.9. A 1992 article by Arthur N. Applebee in the same publication

attacked the issue from a dierent angle: Applebee evaluated studies that “looked in turn

at the book-length studies that students are asked to read” and “at the selections of all

types that teachers actually report using” (Applebee 1992, 27).

Both authors approach the subject with the notion that literary merit is determined by

those in the know; teachers and librarians are the arbiters of quality, and canonical works

such as a Shakespearean play (also at the top of Applebee’s resulting list) set the standard

for literary merit because they are, well, canonical: If the English teachers and librarians

like them, they must be the best. I’m partial to the choices of English teachers myself,

Engaging Students with Literature

I admit, but before I assault students with works that I consider to be of merit, or even

before I try to justify my approach to choosing works for study, I nd it worthwhile to

hear what the students themselves think our working denition of the term should be.

ey, aer all, have to live with our choices as much as, if not more than, I do. Even in

1928, Graves was aware that works can’t be divided easily into two columns; one doesn’t

quickly sort through titles and emerge with one list of worthy texts and another list of

pulp. Students generally come to the same conclusion pretty quickly.

e day aer making the assignment, once the students shue into class and nervously

take out their homework (thinking to themselves, I’m certain, “Do I have to turn this

in? How will he grade this? What if I’m wrong?”), I ask for a volunteer to give me a rst

criterion for our denition. I write the response on the board, we discuss it, haggle a

bit, possibly modify or erase or add, and then move on to a new criterion. e exercise

takes most of the class period, at the end of which I take up the original responses for a

completion grade, and when it’s over we have usually come to a consensus (or nearly to

one) that looks like this one from the class I’ve been describing:

A Deﬁnition of Literary Merit

e work of literature:

1. Entertains the reader and is interesting to read.

2. Does not merely conform to the expectations of a single genre or formula.

3. Has been judged to have artistic quality by the literary community (teachers,

students, librarians, critics, other writers, the reading public).

4. Has stood the test of time in some way, regardless of the date of publication.

5. Shows thematic depth: e themes merit revisiting and study because they are

complex and nuanced.

6. Demonstrates innovation in style, voice, structure, characterization, plot and/or

description.

7. May have a social, political or ideological impact on society during the lifetime of

the author or aerward.

8. Does not fall into the traps of “pulp” ction such as clichéd or derivative

descriptions and plot devices, or sentimentality rather than “earned” emotion.

9. Is intended by the author to communicate in an artistic manner.

10. Is universal in its appeal (i.e., the themes and insights are not only accessible to one

culture or time period).

Engaging Students with Literature

Certainly, there are arguable points on this list. How, for instance, does one judge the

intent of the author? In a sense, however, arguable points are exactly what I’m aer. While

I feel that literary merit is fairly easy to agree on at the extremes — most people do, in fact,

accept that Hamlet is a pretty darn good play — there’s a lot of gray area in the middle that

I want students to explore through thoughtful discussion and with the burden of proof.

When we nish our list, which is a little dierent every year but for the most part contains

the same 10 or so criteria, I again oer the list of works students chose for the timed essay

assignment. Here’s where the going gets tough; not all students believe the criteria apply to

all of the texts in the same way. Is e Five People You Meet in Heaven overly sentimental

or insightful and thought provoking? Did Dan Brown write e Da Vinci Code with the

intent to create great art or to keep readers turning pages, or both? Some texts, we all

agree, meet only three or four of our criteria, others seven or eight; Hamlet meets all 10,

we think, but what about a Shakespearean play like, say, King John? We have to ask, as well,

whether or not all of the criteria count equally.

ere’s also an implicit argument students sometimes make that they — students — are

not part of the “literary community” they cite in their denition. It’s important to discuss

the role of students, as a whole and as individuals, in the ongoing dialogue about how we

judge quality in ction. If we don’t have this discussion, we could send the message that

Michael R. Collings warned about in an essay in regard to teaching works by Stephen

King: In telling students that an author like King is “too unsophisticated, too clumsy, too

peripheral, too common to merit attention,” we also communicate that “student readers

are themselves too unsophisticated, too clumsy, too peripheral, too common to merit

attention” (Collings 1997, 120).

In the end, even if we’re le in limbo about a few titles, the class agrees that the distinction

of literary merit involves considering a spectrum of works, not a simple division. at’s

a good rst step, and here’s a second: e next assignment is for each student to take the

work he or she wrote about on the essay assignment and provide some evidence for every

item on our list. What do the critics say about Prep? What does the author say about it?

Are there any particularly well-written passages that can serve as evidence of its quality?

Some of the responses must still, of course, be subjective, but the exercise forces students

to dive into a deeper level of consideration about some texts than they might have before.

“I get it,” says one student. “Some of the works we like to read aren’t necessarily works

of literary merit. So is your point that on the AP Exam we should just write about a

Shakespeare play to be safe?”

Actually, that’s not my point at all. In fact, I expect that AP Exam Readers see an awful

lot of Shakespeare, and I know, as an acquaintance of mine who has evaluated the essays

for many years told me, that AP Readers score the value of a student’s open-ended essay

according to the quality of writing. e Readers do not make a judgment on the title

alone, though it factors in.

“For the purposes of the exam,” I tell my students, “I want you to make a thoughtful

decision. But this discussion is about more than that: We’re talking about what you read

and why.”

Engaging Students with Literature

Deﬁnition and Student Choice

One might take the easy way out and argue that a common denition of a term like

“literary merit” is important precisely because of where and when it crops up. Besides

appearing regularly on the AP English Literature and Composition Exam, the phrase

appears in the language arts standards of dozens of states: New York, Vermont, North

Dakota, Florida, Minnesota, et al. In Wisconsin, for instance, eighth-grade students

should “develop criteria to evaluate literary merit and explain critical opinions about a

text, either informally in conversation or formally in a well-organized speech or essay”

(Wisconsin 2006). e argument, then, must go something like this: If every work a

student reads to fulll a school assignment is oered reverentially by the teacher as a

paragon of literature — whether that work is Romeo and Juliet or Charlotte’s Web — how

can that student ever develop a “critical opinion” about a work he or she picks up on his

own, whether that work is e Lovely Bones or a Harlequin romance?

at’s not to say that there’s not a certain de facto exploration of the concept of literary

merit going on in many, if not most, language arts classrooms. Teachers are apt to

include a variety of texts in their syllabi and students tend to develop an ad hoc sense

of what’s “good.” At the same time, many students, I believe, develop a sense of guilt or

defensiveness about the works they like to read but aren’t “allowed” to read (think J. K.

Rowling, James Patterson or Stephenie Meyer) and, at the worst, shut down in English

classes because they feel no investment in works they’ve been assigned. More and more

teachers are realizing the dangers of a top-down approach to making assignments; in the

interest of cataloging the ongoing debate over the issue of literary merit, it’s worth noting

yet a third article from English Journal, this one written in 2001 by Rocco Versaci as part

of a defense of comic books in the classroom:

As teachers of literature, we should not strive to get students to accept without

question our own judgments of what constitutes literary merit, for such acceptance

inevitably positions students in the position of seeing literature as a “medicine”

that will somehow make them better people, if only they learn to appreciate it.

When students view literature in this light, they resent it, and literary works

remain a mystery that they cannot solve.

Students need to tackle challenging texts they may never have heard of with the help of a

passionate and informed teacher. ey also need, for the act of reading for enjoyment, to

be validated. ey also need some tools to evaluate the novels and plays that they choose to

read. An important step, then, is paying attention to student choice. Ultimately, we need to

validate a student’s ability to choose texts of merit on his or her own (or at least to choose

texts on his or her own and then evaluate the merit).

As dierentiated instruction becomes standard pedagogical practice in more and

more classrooms, student choice in reading assignments has become a subject of some

discussion. Interestingly, one study conducted by the National Center for Education

Statistics concluded that although “students felt more positive about the experience

when they were allowed to select a story, there were no dierences between choice and

Engaging Students with Literature

non-choice samples in students’ reports of their motivation to perform well on the

assessment” of that material (Campbell and Donahue 1997). But it’s not necessarily

improved reading comprehension on standardized tests that proponents of student choice

seek to accomplish, although a better test score wouldn’t be a bad side eect. Take, for

instance, Ale Kohn (1993, 8–20):

Every teacher who is told what material to cover, when to cover it, and how to

evaluate children’s performance is a teacher who knows that enthusiasm for

one’s work quickly evaporates in the face of being controlled. Not every teacher,

however, realizes that exactly the same thing holds true for students: Deprive them

of self-determination and you have likely deprived them of motivation.

e goal, in other words, is to produce lifelong readers, but also readers whose experiences

with texts are rich and deep and have the capability to grow over time.

In the case of an AP English Literature and Composition teacher like myself, that goal is

brought home by the very format of the exam I’m preparing students to take. e open-

ended question on the AP Exam doesn’t require students to write about particular works;

it requires them to write about literary concepts. Some choices support some arguments

better, but a student must have more than the works of Shakespeare in his or her arsenal to

answer competently every possible question about characterization, structure, theme, plot

or literary technique. e question, in other words, allows for choice, an argument in itself

for syllabi that also make such allowances.

In the case of my own summer reading assignment, students read three novels or plays.

e rst I assign to the entire class; last year, this work was e Importance of Being

Earnest. (I have my own reasons for making that assignment; they pertain to where

and how I start my curriculum.) Students choose the second work from a list of 10

contemporary novels like Life of Pi, e God of Small ings and e Kite Runner. rough

this list I accomplish a few goals simultaneously: I expose students to contemporary

literature from around the world; I provide choice while at the same time ensuring that

enough students will read each work that I can have them participate in small literature

circles in class or online; and I oer, implicitly, one standard of literary merit — my own.

In our class discussions I’ll encourage students to question that standard, since it’s as

subjective as any other, but it’s a starting place for their thinking about the matter.

The third work students read is a novel or play of their own choosing. Here’s the

actual assignment:

Choose one other novel or play of literary merit to read over the summer. is

work may be contemporary or classic, but you will be required to defend your

choice and to analyze and refer to it in class discussions and writing assignments.

If you want a list of suggested titles, try asking friends, your parents, the local

bookstore clerk, a librarian or other teachers — or even me.

us, I get e Da Vinci Code from one student, Great Expectations from another. Which

student came out ahead? at depends on whom you ask.

Engaging Students with Literature

roughout my course, I try to oer students choice in their reading in a variety of ways.

When we study Hamlet, I assign small groups to read other tragedies together and to

present group projects. Instead of a standard research paper on the work of one writer,

I ask students to focus their research on a thematic comparison of works by more than

one author; the reading list is the toughest part of this assignment, and it usually takes

consultation with more than one English teacher in our school for a student to put that list

together. At other times, I ask students to choose outside reading from a list and complete

dialectical journals or, sometimes, to sit down with me for an oral interview about the

text. And sometimes (over the winter holiday break, for instance) I instruct them to read

one book — any book — that they can tell the class about upon our return.

Along the way, I manage to teach a healthy number of canonical works: Chaucer,

Shakespeare, Conrad, a whole slew of poets. And the discussion about literary merit

doesn’t end in the rst week of school; it enriches our reading of, say, a sonnet by Milton

in the same week as an epigram by Jonson, or cummings’s “since feeling is rst” in

the same class period as Catullus’ poems to Lesbia. In this way, we create an ongoing

discussion among readers: those in the class and those from throughout the centuries.

When the Discussion’s Over: Further Strategies

I believe in the value of the philosophical discussion of the phrase “literary merit”

with students, but I also value practical application of concepts and ideas raised in the

classroom. Here, for instance, are a few ideas for capitalizing on an initial conversation

about how we judge quality in the texts we read:

• As I mentioned above, the question of a work’s merit oers avenues for research

that are ultimately, I think, more interesting and meaningful than a simple

encyclopedia-based report on an author’s life. Send students looking for critical

responses to a text from contemporary reviewers, other authors or the literary

community. It’s interesting to read, for example, the response of Steinbeck’s own

generation to e Grapes of Wrath through the lens of historical understanding.

• Many sample writing prompts, such as the one I quoted at the beginning of this

article, are available to teachers at the College Board’s AP Central® website and in

other places on the Web; it’s fairly easy to construct more of your own. roughout

the year, I periodically read several of these prompts to students and have them list

titles they might use to answer each one. e exercise doesn’t just prepare students

for the actual AP Exam or other on-demand writing assignments like it; it also gets

them talking to one another and as a class about what they’ve read, where there are

gaps in their reading (“I’ve never read a work I’d classify as magical realism — have

you?”), and how they as a group judge quality and merit. During these sessions, I

encourage students to jot down titles, mentioned by classmates, that are unfamiliar

or that they might like to add to their own personal reading lists.

Engaging Students with Literature

• Oen, the criteria included in a class denition of literary merit compel students

to value close reading and careful analysis. If, for instance, a work that ts the

denition includes “innovation in style” or “voice,” as the class denition provided

above suggests, then surely it’s incumbent upon a group of students studying Pride

and Prejudice to nd examples of innovative style or to identify the characteristics

of the narrator’s voice. Pointing to the criteria on the class denition, I sometimes

place the responsibility on small groups of students to decide which passages

in a text we most need to discuss as a class; this approach has the added benet

of making it certain that someone in the class will have an opinion to add to the

discussion of a given passage.

• e process of applying a denition of merit to specic texts does not only lend

itself to better discussion, it also provokes just the sort of thoughtful response I’m

looking for in analytical essays. One might use parts of the denition to make an

essay assignment (there’s value in writing about specic passages that demonstrate

innovation, for instance), but the denition might also be helpful in the revision

process. Many student essays not only fail to show the sort of thematic depth

specied on the list above, they actively try to excise depth out of themes of novels

and plays in their essays, summing up an argument with a neat, tidy conclusion

that fails to illustrate the nuances of the work’s meaning (“Macbeth fails because

of his ambition …”). Revisiting the list is a good way to guide students closer to

writing sophisticated thesis statements and nal paragraphs.

At some point during the year I share this information with the class: e College Board

itself is vague about the meaning of the phrase “literary merit.” It denes the term partly

through comparison to a list of texts, partly by excluding “ephemeral works in popular

genres” that “yield all (or nearly all) of their pleasures of thought and feeling the rst

time through,” and partly by referring to oreau’s injunction to “read the best books

rst” (College Board 2006, 45). It’s a disservice to students, I think, not to allow them an

opportunity to examine such a term critically; to, in fact, enter into a dialogue that has

been ongoing for perhaps as long as stories have been told; and to engage in that dialogue

as equal members, not as mere recipients of others’ opinions. If we want students to value

the works we respect enough to read and write about them with care, we need to respect

the student’s right to value or not to value works of literature. We must let those works rest

not on the weight of syllabi or traditional lists or teachers’ preferences but, in fact, on their

own merits.

Engaging Students with Literature

Works Cited

Applebee, Arthur N. “Stability and Change in the High-School Canon.” English Journal 81

(1992): 27−32. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-8274(199209)81%3A5%3C27%3ASACI

TH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S (accessed April 3, 2008).

Campbell, Jay R., and Patricia L. Donahue. Students Selecting Stories: e Eects of

Choice in Reading Assessment. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.

U.S. Department of Education, June 1997. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/

main1994/97491.pdf (accessed April 3, 2008).

College Board. AP English Course Description. New York: e College Board, 2006. http://

apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/repository/52272_apenglocked5_30_4309.pdf

(accessed May 1, 2007).

Collings, Michael R. “King in the Classroom,” in Reading Stephen King: Issues of

Censorship, Student Choice, and Popular Literature. Urbana, IL: National Council

of Teachers of English, 1997. http://www.ncte.org/library/les/Store/Books/

Sample/39051Chap11.pdf (accessed April 3, 2008).

Graves, C. Edward. “Measuring Literary Merit.” English Journal 17, no. 4 (1928): 328–

331. JSTOR. University of Memphis, Memphis. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-

8274(192804)17%3A4%3C328%3AMLM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U (accessed April 1, 2007).

Kohn, Ale. “Choices for Children.” Phi Delta Kappan 75, no. 1 (Sept. 1993): 8–20. http://

www.alekohn.org/teaching/cfc.htm (accessed April 3, 2008).

Versaci, Rocco. “How Comic Books Can Change the Way Our Students See Literature: One

Teacher’s Perspective.” English Journal 91 (Nov. 2001): 61−67. http://www.ncte.org/library/

les/Publications/Journals/ej/0912-nov01/EJ0912Comic.pdf (accessed April 3, 2008).

Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. English Language Arts Standards. Aug. 30,

2006. http://dpi.state.wi.us/standards/elaa8.html (accessed May 3, 2007).

Engaging Students with Literature

Our Zeitgeist: Fighting the White

Noise

John Harris

Santa Monica High School

Santa Monica, Calif.

Read, Read, Read!

iPods, Play Stations, YouTube, Cable TV, DVDs, IM, texting, Tweeting, Facebook or a

good novel? Increasingly books face more and more competition for teenagers’ attention.

Even the teenager who likes to read nds the onslaught of alternative media hard to

ignore. Furthermore, if family members do not read plays, poems or novels at home,

then it is likely that, for many students, reading literature (or reading at all) may not be

modeled at home — a key element to encouraging reading among many students.

At the same time, the AP English Literature and Composition Exam is, among other

things, a test of how well read a student is. A well-read student is more likely to have

a large vocabulary, respond more quickly to texts and with more eloquence, and have

greater familiarity with the various motifs in the poetry and prose passages. is is such

an important factor that vertical planning for the AP Exam must include a rigorous

reading program for the two or three years of high school prior to enrolling in the

course. Yet no amount of assigned reading in and out of class can necessarily overcome

the white noise of the high-tech distractions seducing our students away from Twain,

Ellison and Shakespeare.

Each of us faces the problem outlined above, and many of us enjoy individual victories

with students who turn on to reading as late as their enrollment in AP English Literature

and Composition. But we also despair over students who leave our classes without a

love of (or even a mild interest in) literature. ese students may certainly be intelligent

enough to get by, choking down books or by taking shortcuts with summaries; however,

we fear their education will always be a chore and their teachers next year will again have

to try to overcome their aversion to reading.

Why are the readers such a delight? We may love to teach them partly because they share

our love of reading (and potentially writing). But I love them most because, in my eyes,

half of my job as a high school English teacher is already done with them. e readers

have acquired so many skills from their reading and, better yet, will acquire many more

through their own self-propelled education that I need only point these students in the

right direction and guide them forward rather than tempt, shove and cajole them. ese

students are, more oen than not, academically ready for college.

e AP Exam rewards the well-read booklovers. Yet a love of literature is more likely to

happen in the rst 17 years of a student’s life than in the eight months you have him or her

Engaging Students with Literature

before the AP Exam in May. us, the AP teacher has an obligation to prepare students for

the rigorous reading expectations of college and to turn them on to reading during their

few months in the course.

Santa Monica High School

At Santa Monica High School we have an open-door policy for our AP English classes.

Anyone can enroll in AP English Language and Composition or AP English Literature

and Composition with either a recommendation from their present English teacher or

by requesting a waiver (a relatively easy process of signing, in the presence of a school

administrator, a paper acknowledging the diculty of the course). Santa Monica High

School is also a large comprehensive high school in a city of 75,000, surrounded by the

even larger urban area of Los Angeles. Our population is ethnically diverse: 50 percent

white, 35 percent Latino, 10 percent African American, 5 percent other. ese two factors

contribute to the wide range of personalities, cultures and skill levels in our AP English

Literature and Composition classes. is diversity enriches class discussions, but one of

the great challenges of teaching the course is that the skill levels of the enrolled seniors are

also very diverse. Directly correlated to this is the wide range of reading interest among

the students enrolled in the course. Some never read unless forced; some read addictively.

Most of them like reading if they get sucked into a plot or an engaging character, but they

would rather text on their cell phones, go to the movies or surf the Web.

us, outside reading is a key element of my AP English Literature and Composition

curriculum. Over the course of a year, students read ve novels, a play (Candide),

selections of the Bible, and a “schoolwide” book each summer. Coupled with rigorous

reading expectations over the previous two or three years of high school, the hope is that

this will generate fairly well-read students. More important, if the reading and writing

assignments inspire the students, many of the seniors in the courses will carry a love of

reading with them into their future endeavors.

Teacher and Student Goals for the Project

e zeitgeist reading and writing project encourages students to read and research a

particular era of history and write a report at the end of the spring semester, aer the AP

Exam. I have designed this “guided” independent reading and writing project to address

three concerns, two of which I have already mentioned. First, the project is designed to

engage readers who have previously either meandered through outside reading without

a focus or faked their way through it because of a lack of interest in reading. Second, the

project is designed to have the exibility to teach to diverse skill levels and yet maintain

a high level of rigor for all students. ird, since an AP class is more a preparation for

college than preparation for an exam in May, the project is designed to give students a

taste of the semester-long research projects that they will encounter in college.

Engaging Students with Literature

e goals from the student perspective are as follows:

1. Get the satisfaction of intensive research and the vastly more insightful reading

that comes from this research.

2. Learn to work one-on-one with a teacher, developing research strategies, thesis

statements and draing. (Hopefully most students will appreciate the value of

proactive learning by the end of the unit if they do not do so already.)

3. Find your own comfort level of rigor to encourage your best writing.

4. Integrate historical research into literary analysis writing.

5. Appreciate the impact of literature on how we all perceive our history.

6. Write a sustained literary analysis essay, not just the shorter papers so prevalent in

high school but less frequently assigned in college.

7. Meet the rigorous standards of an AP course.

8. For some: GET AN “A.”

The Zeitgeist Assignment

If successful, the project should result in students reading widely through their spring

semester, writing a seven- to 10-page essay worthy of the sophisticated expectations of

college courses and, with a little luck, provide students an opportunity for success that

may tip the balance toward students becoming avid readers.

At the beginning of the spring emester, I hand out a reading list (see Appendix) and the

following instructions.

Engaging Students with Literature

The Zeitgeist Project/ Harris/ 11AP

Read at least two novels and one nonction book about a particular era or movement

in American history. You might want to focus on the Civil War, the 1960s, World War

II or Vietnam; you might even want to follow a trend such as the abolitionist movement

or the space race. Students in the past have used Blood Meridian and Moby Dick to

understand Manifest Destiny, Catch 22 to understand the absurdity of World War II, or

White Noise to understand the postmodern perspective of the 1980s.

Just as Steinbeck’s e Grapes of Wrath dictates, in part, how we see our own

Depression-era history, many novels (and lms) inuence the way in which we

interpret historical moments in American history. We do not just rely on history books,

documentary lms and newspapers. Primary sources and nonction accounts of our

past do not always end up as the dominant stories of our past. For example, most

Americans’ understanding of the Puritan culture of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is

profoundly informed by Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and Miller’s e Crucible.

Your goal is to become familiar, via literature, with a particular era or movement

of American history. Write an essay in which you demonstrate that the novel (or

novels) you read capture the zeitgeist of a particular period (i.e., the theme of the

novel is the theme of the era). Also be aware of how the novel also may inform the

culture’s perception of that era. In order to do that best, you will need to juxtapose

the perspective of a nonction account of that era to the perspective in your novel(s).

e best place to start is with a novel. For your rst zeitgeist proposal, consider

the rst novel you would like to read and the era or movement you would like to

research. Write a one- to two-page project proposal explaining your area of interest,

the books you may read and the themes you may research. You will nd some mere

suggestions for titles and periods or movements below. (See Appendix.) Talk to me

about your ideas!

Right away there are two main challenges for the students: picking a rst novel and

understanding what zeitgeist means. is will require the teacher to devote some

class time to describing novels on the list.

The Zeitgeist Concept

is is not a simple concept for students to grasp. eir understanding will evolve as they

read and as you teach the idea to them. I begin by using the language they already know,

such as theme and tone. e zeitgeist of an era (such as the Great Depression) or of a

movement (such as the civil rights movement) is the historical theme or set of themes that

the populace perceived at that time or the historical perspective we now have regarding

the themes, intellectual trend and tone of an historical period or movement.

Engaging Students with Literature

is dicult abstraction slowly reveals itself through the use of examples; I will use books

students have already read during their junior year, such as e Great Gatsby, e Grapes

of Wrath and e Scarlet Letter. I also discuss the enormous impact television and lm

have on our perception of historical periods, and I constantly emphasize the undoubtedly

huge impact art has on our perceptions of the zeitgeist of a particular era.

Once students do begin to see that the themes of a novel can parallel the zeitgeist (i.e.,

themes) of an era, the zeitgeist concept becomes exciting for them. Ideally, students will

not only begin to understand the potential for a novel to capture the spirit of the times of

a particular era (i.e., depict the crucial themes of the people living at that time and place)

but also, more profoundly, they will appreciate the potential for a widely read novel, such as

one assigned in high schools across America, to form the way we perceive the zeitgeist of an

era or historical movement. is more postmodern notion of the subjective malleability of

history and the role of literature in the forming of our historical perspectives can be a fertile

ground for some of our more sophisticated readers and writers.

Picking a Book

Note that the books on the reading list (see Appendix) are mostly either canonical or

recently praised contemporary works. Although I love mysteries and spy novels as much

as anyone, I designed the list to encourage students to become better read in the classics or

what likely will become classics. Simultaneously, I designed the list to have the exibility

to meet the potential interests and reading levels of a wide range of students without

risking a potential “watering down” of the curriculum. e struggling readers will have

ample opportunity for success without necessarily revisiting the potential frustrations of

the rigorous, commonly taught AP English Literature and Composition classroom books

(such as works by Conrad, Shakespeare and Faulkner). I use a few rules:

1. Rely on the students’ knowledge of United States history. Most students in AP

English Literature and Composition are either also studying U.S. history or

studied it in a previous year. Encourage research into an area of history they nd

intriguing, they think they have some mastery of or they wish to learn more

about. If you are especially motivated, coordinate with the U.S. history teachers

to augment the reading list and help guide students’ book choices. I rely on the

history department for help with the nonction choices, since I am less familiar

with that genre. If your knowledge or your students’ knowledge tends toward

histories other than U.S. history, you may want to either focus your reading there

or simply expand the scope beyond American literature and history.

2. Use your judgment about what authors are most appropriate for your students and,

if possible, become increasingly familiar with the books on your “recommended”

list. For example, few students will be successful with Faulkner’s Absalom,

Absalom! on their own, but most students ought to be able to manage O’Brien’s e

ings ey Carried or Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus.

Engaging Students with Literature

3. If possible, present the unit during the spring semester because you will know your

students’ reading abilities better, and you can inform them during the previous fall

semester that this project is coming up and that they might want to either think

about areas of research in advance or, for the most motivated students, start some

reading in advance. Guiding their choices in reading is very important for success,

because few of the students are suciently well read to make informed choices

about their area of research or the best books for the project.

4. Have them start with a novel. Students need to let the literature dictate themes

that they hope to pursue as indicative of the zeitgeist of an era. If students read a

nonction work rst, they tend to get excited about an historical topic and forget

altogether that the project ultimately is a literary analysis paper, not a history

paper. e nonction reading is simply there to encourage students to understand

their chosen eras better, so that they may write about a particular historical period

with greater familiarity and juxtapose the historical perspective with the literary

perspective of their novels.

5. Encourage students to read well beyond the three-book requirement. Many students

will read four to six books simply because of their excitement about the project. (is

is one of the joys of this project; many students will transcend your expectations.)

6. Some books work much better than others for this project. e reading list

included here (see Appendix) merely scratches the surface; however, I strive to

choose social novels, novels with grand scope and widely read canonical works

because these books tend to do one of the following: (a) capture the zeitgeist of an

era because they are so widely read that they dominate our impression of an era

or movement (e.g., e Scarlet Letter, e Godfather or e Grapes of Wrath); (b)

capture the zeitgeist because the novelist intended to do just that (e.g., Ragtime,

e Killer Angels or e Jungle); or (c) capture the zeitgeist because the scope of the

book is so vast (e.g., Invisible Man, Moby Dick or Underworld).

7. Let the students write about books you read as a class, but do not let them use

them as one of their three choices. Also be wary of students passing o books read

with a class in previous years as one of their three choices.

8. You do not have to limit this project to AP English Literature and Composition;

this unit can work well in other English or history courses.

9. Avoid contemporary novels unless the student is especially excited about a

particular work or thesis. Students and I nd it hard to dene the zeitgeist of the

era in which we live.

Engaging Students with Literature

Proposals

Collect the students’ one- to two-page proposals before you approve their rst novel.

Comment on these and return them quickly so that you don’t delay their independent

reading. Students who narrow their scope early and start reading will be more likely to

succeed in this project.

Guidance: The First Two Book Talks

e book talks are the key to the diversied teaching model of this assignment. ese are

modeled aer conferences with college professors during their oce hours; a minimum

of four such sessions should be required. Ideally, students eventually learn the ecacy of

meeting with a teacher one-on-one. Aer the due date for the rst novel, I will schedule

two to three weeks of book talks during lunch, before school and aer school. Class

time is too precious to spend on class projects, and it is essential that you give your full

attention to a student during the talk (a task that is hard to do while managing the rest of

the students).

Initially, the rst book talk should establish the level of reading comprehension of the

novel. During the 10- to 15-minute discussion I will pull specic quotations from the

novel at random, read them aloud and then ask the student what is going on in the text.

I will also ask numerous follow-up questions. Fairly quickly, one can get a sense of the

degree of the student’s comprehension. If it is going poorly, I will cut to the chase and ask

if the student is truly nished. (Usually a student will confess at this point.) On the other

hand, a well-prepared student will be dicult to interrupt. In order to encourage their

best preparation for the rst book talk, I model one in class using a book the students read

during the fall semester. ey should feel empowered by this demonstration, as it is not as

dicult as it may sound if one uses a recently read book. However, students who did not

read the book carefully will be well warned of the degree of specic knowledge they will

need for our rst book talk.

Since the project starts in the spring, I already will have a fairly good sense of the reading

abilities of the students in my class. us, when I have students schedule their book talks, I

will customize the required materials that they have for the talk. For the rst two sessions,

I may require some students to bring just their books, but for other students I may

require historical summaries, freewrites, summaries, character lists and/or working thesis

statements. (I have a preference for freewrites, but use what you nd most helpful and

most appropriate for the student.) is preparation helps the struggling reader develop the

necessary focus for success.

During the book talks, I have gone so far as to make a study of their body language when

I ask at the beginning of the talk, “Did you nish the book?” (Look out for the shi in

the chair, the look up and the pause!) Most of the time is best reserved for discussing the

direction of the research and potential paper topics and/or thesis statements. Students lead

Engaging Students with Literature

the best conversations, and you simply guide their research, their focus and their grasp

of the scope of the assignment. But for the struggling reader, you may have to provide

instruction about the themes of the novel and the historical trends of the time period she

or he is writing about. e supplemental writing assignments oen make these sorts of

conversations more fruitful.

Consistently throughout the process, remind your students that this is not a history paper

but a literary analysis paper. e nonction work should not dictate the paper topic,

since a student must write that a novel or set of novels serves to capture or even create the

zeitgeist of a particular era. us the nonction book serves two supplementary purposes:

First, it provides an historical understanding of the context of a novel; second, it exposes

a student to the stylistic dierences of a historical approach to past events, as opposed to

the approach a novelist might take. e dierences in tone, narrative convention, poetic

liberties, etc., are important to note because most students assume that history writing is

our primary source of knowledge of history; however, this assignment will likely enlighten

them otherwise. Fiction, lm and television probably impact the common person’s

perception of history and the zeitgeist of an era far more than history books, especially

once people are out of school. ey will eventually see that while academics rule published

history, artists, writers and lmmakers have an enormous impact on our perception of

historical events.

The Third Book Talk

e third book talk, held aer all the reading is complete but the due date for the paper

is still a couple of weeks away, should require at the very least a specic working thesis.

At this point not only should you discuss the novels or nonction texts but also discuss

the papers on the horizon. Some students may bring in a dra or partial dra at this

early time. I oen require freewrites from those who are still struggling. Ideally this

conversation will direct students into writing or perhaps further research.

I grade these rst three book talks based on how well the students understood the

book, their completion of the reading and their satisfaction of the specic writing

requirements I gave them. If I am fairly condent that the reading was done and

that they understood the book, I am eager to give the students an A. I also strive

to suciently weight the assignment so as to encourage students to do the reading.

Hopefully, they walk away from the book talk feeling that they have a better grasp on

their topic and received a satisfactory grade.

e other important aspect of these book talks is the potential social and academic

bonding with a student. In a 15-minute conversation, I can learn much more about a

student than I might over months of school. Students also tend to become more motivated

when working on a project in which their teacher is taking a personal interest. Although

these book talks can be very time consuming, they pay o in excellent papers and better

relationships with students.

Engaging Students with Literature

ese rst three book talks are time consuming, and teachers should consider that before

committing to this sort of independent project; however, the time invested before school,

during lunch and aer school is recouped in a few ways. First, there is only one paper

assessment for all three of these independent novels. I would much rather discuss history

and literature with a student for 15 minutes than grade a paper. Second, the assessments

oen associated with outside reading can be completed by a clever student even if he or

she has not read the novel; however, it is very hard to lie one’s way through a book talk.

e questions regarding specic passages befuddle the student who is only familiar with a

novel summary. us, the book talks are more likely to encourage a student to read. ird,

the time spent getting to know students and showing an interest in their reading and

writing will pay o in class management, and in motivating more recalcitrant students.

Parents can also be a wonderful resource for help during the reading and research stage

of this project. Parents oen become intrigued by their child’s topic or book choices. I

encourage parents to read the same books and discuss them at home; at the very least,

parents and grandparents can be a valuable resource for explanations of the zeitgeist of a

particular era.

Scheduling and the Last Book Talk

I schedule the paper to be due at the end of May for two reasons: First, I want the students

to do the bulk of their draing aer the AP English Literature and Composition Exam.

ey are free from the stresses of the exam and more open to the argument that it is one

part of their preparation for college, but the paper more closely models something that

they will likely do in college (a paper with an argument extended over approximately 10

pages). Second, I need to collect the papers with enough time to grade them before the

end of the semester. Last year I collected 72 papers with an average length of eight pages.

Add the papers I collected for other classes, and I had a Russian novel’s worth of high

school writing to grade. e good news is that the papers tend to be well written because

so much time and thought has gone into their composition. I also am not as concerned

with making corrections that raise writing issues to be addressed in future papers, since

this is the last one of the year.

e process of creating freewrites, graphic organizers, outlines, dras and peer writing

begins aer the AP Exam. During this time of writing and editing, meeting with a student

during class is manageable. Every student will go over a dra of their paper with me in

class. Because this happens over several days, some will show me early dras, some later

ones. Many students at this point will have seen the ecacy of teacher meetings in the

research and writing process and will try to meet with me aer class as well. Again, you

can customize your instruction to each student’s needs in these conversations.

Even those students who struggle with reading and the writing process should be

successful if they are willing to put in the eort. e success stories revolve around

students who became so enamored with their own thinking on this project that they were

Engaging Students with Literature

pulled away from the incessant siren song of their iPods, cell phones and TV, and instead

saw that, with eort and individual help, they could write to a high standard.

I like the project because I get to know the students better and because students with low

skills do not need lower standards in order to be successful. ey can read books directed

toward their interests and reading levels, meet with a teacher to guide them through the

process, and have ample time to research, plan and compose their essays.

Readers, Readers, Readers

In essence this is an independent project with considerable hand-holding. Some students

will need several one-on-one conversations with you in order to be successful, while

others may only need three or four such sessions. is may be your students’ rst

exposure to an intensive, long-term research and literary analysis paper that may mirror

the rigors of a college term paper. ey will need your guidance to manage the research

and write a paper with a sustained argument. If your students go to a school with very

large classes, it is possible that they have written very few long papers in their entire high

school career.

In the nal tally of insightful papers and great conversations with students, I hope that I

have a few more bibliophiles in my class. Each year, I reect on this project and how to do

it better. e students who were inspired to write insightfully and read extensively inspire

me for the following year. Although I can’t include here the smiles of successful students, I

will share the titles of a few great papers:

“Blood Meridian and Moby Dick: Idealism and Brutality in America’s Manifest Destiny”

“e Godfather, e Sopranos and the Swirling Simulacra of the Mob”

“Tender Is the Night and ‘Babylon Revisited’: e End of the Party in Paris and the

American Ex-Patriot Depression”

“e Octopus: e Railroad-Dominated Economy of California in the Late 1800s”

“Mundane in America: Babbitt, Suburbia and the ’20s”

“Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five: Absurdity and America’s Disillusionment with War

from World War II to Vietnam”

“Beloved: e Legacy of African American Trauma Aer the Reconstruction”

“Invisible Man: Divisions in the African American Reform Movements”

Engaging Students with Literature

Appendix: Suggested Reading List

(Please note that this list focuses on American literature; please feel free to adapt it to your

own needs.)

e following era designations are approximate and novels oen will cover eras beyond the

scope of these groupings.

1990s and Now

e Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Falling Man by Don DeLillo

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

e Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle

Independence Day by Richard Ford

A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind.

I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe

MAO II by Don DeLillo

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

e Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

1980s

White Noise by Don DeLillo

e Sportswriter by Richard Ford

Bonre of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney

Less an Zero by Brett Easton Ellis

e Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

Engaging Students with Literature

Vietnam War

e ings ey Carried by Tim O’Brien

Dispatches by Michael Herr

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

Paco’s Story by Larry Heinemann

A Dangerous Friend by Ward Just

e Quiet American by Graham Greene (not American)

The Cold War/Post World War II

Underworld by Don DeLillo

Libra by Don DeLillo

Sophie’s Choice by William Styron

Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

e Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

1970s

Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. ompson

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. ompson

Surfacing by Margret Atwood

Drop City by T. C. Boyle

e Ice Storm by Rick Moody

e World According to Garp by John Irving

Democracy by Joan Didion

1960s

e Right Stu by Tom Wolfe

e Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

e Journey to the East by Herman Hesse (Hesse is not American; read with Acid Test)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Engaging Students with Literature

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

e Autobiography of Malcolm X

Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac

e Crying of Lot 49 by omas Pynchon

Rabbit Redux by John Updike

African-American Experience Prior to the Civil

Rights Movement

Native Son and Black Boy by Richard Wright

Another Country by James Baldwin

e Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (nonction)

eir Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

e Color Purple by Alice Walker

e Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Tar Baby by Toni Morrison

Poetry of Langston Hughes

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner

Shadow and Act by Ralph Ellison

1950s

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

e Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

“Howl” by Allen Ginsberg

e Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

e Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Engaging Students with Literature

Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

e Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Black Like Me by John Howard Grin

Late 1940s

e Black Dahlia by James Ellroy (LA)

e Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

All My Sons by Arthur Miller

e Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

e Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

WWII

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Dangling Man by Saul Bellow

e Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

e Plot Against America by Philip Roth

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

e in Red Line by James Jones

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Big Studio Hollywood

e Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

e Little Sister by Raymond Chandler

e Studio by John Gregory Dunne

Engaging Students with Literature

An Inconvenient Woman by Dominick Dunne

Playland by John Gregory Dunne

A Hollywood Education by David Freeman

1930s

Lost Horizon by James Hilton

e Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Light in August by William Faulkner

e Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Native Son by Richard Wright

Aer Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley

Ask the Dust by John Fante

eir Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

e Postman Always Rings Twice by James Cain

World’s Fair by E. L. Doctorow

1933 Was a Bad Year by John Fante

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand

In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck

e Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Black Boy by Richard Wright

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

1920s

e Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

e Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

An American Tragedy by eodore Dreiser

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

is Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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1910−1919

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemmingway

An American Tragedy by eodore Dreiser

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

1900−1909

Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow

e Awakening by Kate Chopin

e Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Late 1800s

Sister Carrie by eodore Dreiser

McTeague by Frank Norris

e Virginian by Owen Wister

e Octopus by Frank Norris

Looking Backward: 2000−1887 by Edward Bellamy

My Ántonia or O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

Roughing It by Mark Twain

e House of Mirth or e Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Little Big Man by omas Berger

Beloved by Toni Morrison

e Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson

e Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Civil War

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

e Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

Engaging Students with Literature

e Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

e March by E. L. Doctorow

e Unvanquished by William Faulkner

1850s

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

e Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta by John Rollin Ridge

Roughing It by Mark Twain

Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks

Early California History

Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

e Octopus by Frank Norris

Early Western History

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

1840s

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

e Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Walden by Henry David oreau

e Known World by Edward P. Jones

Colonial Period

e Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

e Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

Engaging Students with Literature

e Crucible by Arthur Miller

John Adams by David McCullough

Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis

Pre-Colonial Period

e Ice-Shirt by William Vollmann

Engaging Students with Literature

Strategies for Engaging Students in

an Analysis of

Frankenstein

Julie Dearborn

Mercy High School

San Francisco, Calif.

I teach at Mercy High School, an all-girls, college-preparatory school, which has a

student population of 525, many of whom are rst-generation Americans or international

students. e English department maintains an open enrollment policy for AP English

Literature and Composition, with a prerequisite of three years of high school English.

Some, but not all, of the students in my AP English Literature and Composition class have

taken AP English Language and Composition during their junior year, so some, but not all

of them, are used to the rigors of an AP course. Students also have varying skills levels and

learning styles. My biggest challenge as a teacher is to engage all of them, the gied readers

and writers as well as those who struggle. My primary goal is for each student to discover

the pleasure of reading a classic novel, such as Frankenstein. I continually emphasize that

reading is meant to be a pleasurable activity and that many of the canonical books we read

were as popular in their own time as Hollywood movies are today.

I begin this unit by introducing the students to the elements of gothic horror and

connecting those elements to pop culture. I arrange the students into small groups of

three or four and instruct them to list the sights and sounds that all horror movies have

in common. Almost all girls are familiar with this genre, having cut their teeth on the

Scary Movie and Friday the 13th franchises. Aer they’ve worked on their lists for about

10 minutes, I call on individual students to give examples of specic sights and sounds,

and I compile a list on the board. e sight list includes things like blood, old mansions,

dead trees, secret passageways, bats, rats, lightning, body parts, cons, graveyards and

humans with bulging eyes and pale skin. e sound list includes thunder, howling wolves,

squeaking doors, wind blowing through dead branches, creepy violin and organ music,

shrieks and screams, and hooting owls. Students are typically quite excited by the time we

have compiled our lists, and they become even more so when I show movie clips of classic

and modern horror movies, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, e Bride of Frankenstein,

Young Frankenstein and Interview with a Vampire. I only show about ve minutes of each

movie (scenes with little or no dialogue work best) and instruct them to write down all the

things from our lists that they see and hear.

By this point, I have established the buy-in: Students understand that Frankenstein is a

book that has motifs with which they are already familiar, and they are looking forward

to reading it. e students read a Signet Classic edition that includes a foreword with

biographical information about Mary Shelley; the Signet edition also includes Shelley’s

introduction to the novel, in which she tells how she came to write it. (Reading this helps

Engaging Students with Literature

familiarize students with the [to them] stilted language of the novel.) I also have my

own copy of the Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism edition; it contains excellent

essays from ve contemporary critical perspectives as well as 10 pages of illustrations and

photographs of Victor Frankenstein’s Creature.

Before we begin reading the novel, I give a brief lesson about Mary Shelley’s life and times

and tell students about the fateful night when Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe

Shelley dared each other to write a ghost story and how, as a result, Mary Shelley wrote

Frankenstein when she was only 19. I have some postcards of Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Shelley and Lord Byron, and as I pass these around I tell the students how Mary Shelley’s

mother died 11 days aer giving birth to Mary and I connect this to the preoccupation

with death that pervades Frankenstein. I tell how Mary met Percy when she was 15 and

ran away with him even though he was already married and how three of the couple’s four

children died before the age of six. I tell them how Percy himself died young, when he was

sailing on a lake in Italy and his boat capsized. I also emphasize the celebrity status that

poets had in the 19th century by comparing them to rock stars with groupies (I use Mary’s

half sister, Claire Claremont, and her aair with Lord Byron as an example of a woman

who was a groupie before this term even existed).

My prereading activities also include a discussion in which I ask students to whom they

think the title of the novel, Frankenstein, refers. Most assume it is the Creature, but a few

know that it refers to the creator and not his creation. I always give lots of praise to the

students who know that Victor Frankenstein is the eponymous hero of the novel. I then

ask students to close their eyes and picture the Creature, then draw what they see on a

piece of binder paper. eir drawings are always renditions of the Boris Karlo/Herman

Munster creature: a green-faced, square-headed man with bolts in his forehead and jagged

scars on his face, wearing black clothing.

We are now ready to begin the novel. I assign just the rst two of Robert Walton’s letters

and instruct students to write a list of 10 unfamiliar vocabulary words that they encounter

as they read; I stress that they not look up the words in a dictionary. For the next class,

I put a list of these words on the board and we practice determining their meaning

through context clues. e vocabulary in Frankenstein is not inordinately challenging;

typical unfamiliar words include ardor, countenance, visage, lineaments, hitherto and

fortnight. ese are recurring words in the novel, so by preteaching them I pave the way

for a smoother reading experience. I also take this opportunity to explain the dierences

in the British and American spellings of certain words. e British spelling of ardor and

color, for example, is ardour and colour. I tell students that I only want them to use the

British spelling if they are quoting the book. To help students digest the words, I arrange

them into pairs and instruct them to imagine they are Robert Walton’s sister and answer

his letters, using ve of the words they have just learned. In addition to reinforcing new

vocabulary, writing the letters also connects students with the potentially o-putting

framing device of the novel.

Victor Frankenstein’s Creature rst appears in Robert Walton’s fourth letter: “We perceived

a low carriage, xed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the

Engaging Students with Literature

distance of half a mile: a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic

stature, sat in the sledge and guided the dogs.” I ask students what they think Robert

Walton is describing here, and they always understand that this is the rst description

of the monster. I have them create posters of this scene, using descriptive details from

the novel, and then display the posters. When Victor makes his appearance in the next

paragraph, I lead a discussion on how Robert Walton responds to him. Students typically

say things like “He likes him a lot”; “He’s really nice to him”; “He takes care of him”; and

“He thinks he’s smart.” I want to establish early on the dierences in the ways that Victor

Frankenstein and his Creature are treated by society.

At this point, I have students break into small groups and engage in close readings of the

letters. My goals are twofold: First, I want to introduce the thematic connection between

Robert Walton and Victor Frankenstein (they both have a burning ambition to bring glory

upon themselves; both are tenacious and driven by a desire to conquer nature. Walton

wants to discover a new land; Frankenstein wants to create life). Second, I want students

to notice the images of ice and cold that Shelley uses to begin the novel. ey symbolize

the cold reception that the Creature receives from society and from his creator, Victor

Frankenstein. Ice, snow and cold are associated with the Creature throughout the novel,

from his rst appearance in the North Sea to his nal disappearance into the “darkness

and distance” on the “ice-ra.”

roughout the unit, I have students engage in close readings of particular passages to

reinforce how Shelley’s use of language supports her themes. One example is in Chapter

10, when Victor and his Creature have their confrontation. I tell students to compare and

contrast this scene with the rst time Robert Walton sees the Creature. I want them to

notice the weather, the appearance of the Creature and his eect on those who see him.

At the point in the novel when Victor begins his narrative, I typically assign about ve

chapters at a time for homework and have students complete dialectical journals focused

on elements of the novel, such as justice/injustice, images of nature, lust for power/

greatness, the limits of science, the grotesque/the unnatural and suspense/surprise.

I instruct students to write a minimum of three entries per chapter, and I collect the

journals when we have completed the unit. During class, I arrange the students into small

groups and have them discuss comprehension and analysis questions and nd quotes to

support their answers. In the early chapters, I focus the questions on how Victor is treated

as a child and his love of science. When Victor goes to college, I ask students to focus

on his rebellious spirit and the relationship he has with his teachers. In later chapters,

questions are focused on Victor’s treatment of his Creature, the Creature’s response to the

world and the world’s response to him, Victor’s relationship with his family and friends,

the Creature’s relationship with the cottagers, the Creature’s suering, and whether or not

the revenge he exacts on Victor Frankenstein is justied.

In Chapter 4, when Victor describes the process of making the Creature, I lead the girls in

a discussion of the language Mary Shelley uses. I point out words and phrases such as “My

eyeballs were straining from their sockets,” “My connement,” “My midnight labours,”

“My cheek had grown pale” and “My limbs now tremble.” I guide students to consider

the possibility that, with this language, Shelley is comparing Victor’s process of creating a

Engaging Students with Literature

living being to giving birth, thus establishing through imagery that Victor is the parent of

his Creature. is prepares them for upcoming discussions about what kind of a parent he

is to his “child.”

Before Chapter 5, when Victor rst describes his Creature, I hand back the pictures

the students drew of “Frankenstein.” I instruct them to rip the pictures into shreds and

deposit them in the recycling bin; this is a symbolic purging of the Hollywood-created

image of the Creature, encouraging students to read about him with a fresh perspective.

Aer this, I pass out a collection of pictures of Frankenstein’s Creature; they include

“e Brummagem Frankenstein” (1866), “Irish Frankenstein” (1882), Charles Ogle

as the Creature in Edison’s Frankenstein (1910), Christopher Lee as the Creature in

e Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Keith Jochim as the Creature in Victor Gialanella’s

Frankenstein (1981) and Robert De Niro as the Creature in Kenneth Branagh’s Mary

Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994). (I got these pictures from the Case Studies in Contemporary

Criticism edition of Frankenstein, but most of them can be found on the Internet.)

For my students, it is always a revelation that there are so many different ways of

imagining the Creature. After they have digested this idea and discussed which

versions of the Creature they like and why, I arrange the students into small groups

(of no more than four) and have them create large posters of their own renditions

of the Creature, using descriptive details from the novel and their collective

imaginations. They include quotes from the novel in their posters, and we display the

posters. Shelley uses very few concrete details to describe the Creature, and we discuss

why she made the choice to leave so much to the imagination of the reader. This is

a great opportunity for style analysis. Students can compare the richness of Shelley’s

descriptions of nature to the spare descriptions of the Creature. Why does Shelley do

this? What is she saying about humanity’s relationship to nature?

Aer we nish reading Chapter 6, I begin to show clips of Kenneth Branagh’s Mary

Shelley’s Frankenstein. Before we watch the rst clip, I instruct the students to take notes

on points of divergence between the novel and the movie. ere are various choices

Branagh makes as a director that subvert Shelley’s theme, and I want the students to be

aware of these. Aer we view the rst clip (from the beginning up to the point that Victor

animates the Creature), I draw a Venn diagram on the board and we compare and contrast

the novel and the movie. e most important dierence I want the students to notice is

that in Branagh’s movie, Victor Frankenstein is portrayed more heroically than he is in

the novel: He attempts to take responsibility for what he has done by chasing the Creature

around with an ax, trying to kill it (an abortion comparison is apt here), and aer he

wakes from his fever he is led to believe that a cholera epidemic has killed his Creature.

(In the novel Victor simply ees from his Creature in terror and hopes for the best.) We

repeat this compare/contrast activity at appropriate points in the unit, never viewing a

scene before reading it and typically watching about 20 minutes at a time. Other points at

which the movie diverges thematically from the novel include the trial of Justine (it is le

out of the movie entirely) and the Creature’s demand at the end of the movie that Victor

use Justine’s body as the raw material for his mate.

Engaging Students with Literature

Aer Chapter 14, I give each group of three to four students one of the following questions and

have them create a lesson for the class in which they answer it. ey may present their answers

in the form of a skit, or with visual aids such as posters, or by creating handouts and leading

the class in a discussion or an activity. eir presentations should be 15−20 minutes long.

Questions for Group Project

1. ere is an ongoing debate called Nature vs. Nurture. It addresses the questions:

Are we born with certain characteristics (nature) or do we develop characteristics

as a result of our environment (nurture)? Considering what we know about the

Creature, what side of the debate do you think Shelley falls on? Do you agree with

her? Use specic textual details to support your answers.

2. You learn lots of facts, events, equations, etc., in school that will not only make

you book smart, but you will also develop general characteristics that will help you

function in society. Consider what you learn in school besides the facts. What are

all the “facts” the Creature learns from the time he is a “baby” to the time he takes

his nal leap into the icy sea? What does he learn besides the facts? Use textual

details to support your answers.

3. Where (and when) does the theme of justice/injustice occur in the novel?

Some instances may be less obvious than others. What points do you think

Shelley is making about human beings and society? Use textual details to

support your answers.

Aer we read the section in which the Creature narrates his experiences to Victor, I divide

the students into groups of three or four and give each group a scene from the book and

instruct them to write a skit dramatizing it. Scenes that work well include Robert Walton

and his crew rst spotting the Creature, Victor Frankenstein animating the Creature and

running away in terror, the Creature murdering William and framing Justine as she sleeps

in the barn, the trial of Justine, and the Creature teaching himself to read by watching the

cottagers through a peephole. Aer the students write their skits, they perform them for

the class. I have a box of costumes and props I have collected over the years, and students

are encouraged to use its contents to enliven their productions. Students must use

language from the novel in their skits, and for homework they must individually analyze

the scene that they dramatized; their analyses should focus on imagery and thematic

elements of the scenes and be three to four paragraphs in length.

e nal writing assignment for this unit is a compare/contrast essay. Students may choose to

compare and contrast Robert Walton and Victor Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and the

Creature, or the novel Frankenstein and Kenneth Branagh’s movie Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

I typically spend about a month on this unit. If there is time when we are nished, I show Mel

Brooks’s movie Young Frankenstein as a reward for all of our hard work. is shows students

how a serious novel can be satirized, and it reinforces my message that literary classics are

meant to be enjoyed, not worshipped.

Engaging Students with Literature

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Signet Classic Edition. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc.,

2000.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism). Edited by Johanna

M. Smith. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000.

Engaging Students with Literature

About the Contributors

Julie Dearborn teaches AP English Literature and Composition at Mercy High School,

an all-girls Catholic high school in San Francisco. She has been an AP Exam Reader for

several years.

Barry Gilmore teaches English and social studies at Lausanne Collegiate School in

Memphis, Tenn. He is the author of “Is It Done Yet?” — Teaching Adolescents the Art of

Revision and four other books for teachers. In addition to teaching, he regularly presents

workshops for educators around the country.

John Harris has taught English for the past 13 years. Most recently, he has taught AP

English Language and Composition, AP English Literature and Composition, and ninth-

grade English at Burlingame High School and Santa Monica High School in California.

Deborah Shepard is an education manager for the College Board’s Florida Partnership.

She is a former member of the AP English Literature and Composition Development

Committee, and served as the College Board Advisor for that committee. She taught AP

English Literature and Composition at Lincoln High School in Tallahassee, Fla.