Teaching Narrative in Secondary English
I. Introduction
a. Overview
This module is designed to help English education majors and practicing teachers understand how to effectively comprehend a narrative text. Many strategies support this goal. In this module we will focus more attention on a high leverage and research based practice, student-generated questions.
b. Essential Questions
By the end of this module, you should be able to answer the following questions:
c. Why use narratives in language arts?
The Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts call on students to do the following, related to reading narratives:
It is notable that literary nonfiction also uses a narrative text structure regularly and half of the reading standards pertain to reading literature. It is also noteworthy that narrative knowing is a key secondary English literacy—well worth our efforts to boost comprehension of this genre.
d. Standards
a. Importance
There are two general types of thinking according to Jerome Bruner. The first, paradigmatic, describes logical and scientific thinking and are derived from empirical observation. The other, narrative, describes stories created by human beings to help them understand the real world. “For Bruner, narratives are mental, cultural and symbolic structures that allow.”[i] Besides being a mode of communication, stories are an important way of organizing thinking that is critical to being a human being. We use them to organize our world. Most involve…
Because of their importance, teaching students how to read narratives is an important part of their education. Says Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss, “Storytelling is the oldest form of education.” In the elementary and middle school grades, narratives (including “short stories, myths, folk tales, fables, legends, fantasies, mysteries, science fiction, plays, and poetry” make up 85% of the texts read.
b. Challenges for Students
According to the National Institute for Literacy (2007) report, comprehension of high school texts pose many challenges for middle and high school students. “Comprehension varies depending on the text being read. Even proficient readers may have difficulty comprehending particular texts from time to time. Difficulties with comprehension may result from a reader’s unfamiliarity with the content, style, or syntactic structures of the text [58, 63]. Even as adults, many people struggle when reading Shakespeare…”[ii]
The report lists other challenges adolescent face with text comprehension, such as a) lack of sufficient fluency to achieve comprehension, b) lack of comprehension strategies, such as generating questions, summarizing, and clarifying misunderstandings, and c) limited background knowledge in these domains.[iii]
c. Challenges for Teachers
About eight million students between the fourth and twelfth grades have difficulty reading at the level appropriate for their grade, according to a 2004 Carnegie Corporation Report by Gina Biancarosa and Catherine Snow, a situation that overwhelms teachers trying to help students reach grade-level standards.
Because comprehension involves a host of skills, choosing what, when, and how to provide instruction in the following can overwhelm English teachers:
[i] http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~gcla08/upload/abstr31.pdf
[ii] https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/adolescent_literacy07.pdf
[iii] https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/adolescent_literacy07.pdf
a. Overview
This module is designed to help English education majors and practicing teachers understand how to effectively comprehend a narrative text. Many strategies support this goal. In this module we will focus more attention on a high leverage and research based practice, student-generated questions.
b. Essential Questions
By the end of this module, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- What are the characteristics and elements of a narrative text?
- What critical vocabulary is associated with a narrative?
- How do you prepare to read a narrative?
- How do you analyze a narrative?
- What are the procedures for teaching students to generate their own questions about a narrative?
c. Why use narratives in language arts?
The Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts call on students to do the following, related to reading narratives:
- Discuss the implications of scripts (e.g., oral narratives, narratives in other media, and written texts).
- Teach how to identify themes and layers of symbolism.
- Explicitly teach students how to identify patterns within a text and across texts: Patterns based on knowledge (intertextuality, author, literary tradition, and historical context) and situated perspective of the reader (black aesthetic, feminist, reader response, new criticism, Marxist, poststructuralist, and deconstructionist).
- Show students how to reject the literal‖ (e.g., notice, signify, configure, and build coherence) by expanding/extrapolating (e.g., fables, allegories, and symbolism) and negating/contrasting/conflicting (e.g., irony, satire, and unreliable narrator).
- Map literature as a domain: archetypal themes (e.g., loss of innocence, relationships with nature truth, freedom, conflict, and good vs. evil), interpretive problems (e.g., symbolism, irony, and problems with point of view), plot configurations (e.g., magical realism, coming of age, science fiction, fable, and mystery), character types (e.g., trickster, detective, mythic hero, epic hero, picaresque hero, and tragic hero).
- Explicitly teach how to decode symbolism (e.g., detection, manifestation, function, and sources of knowledge for interpretation).
- Consider literary reasoning as a cultural practice (e.g., demonstrate a willingness to attend to language play as an end to itself, follow the assumption that details form a coherent whole even when they appear not to do so, use analogical reasoning, construct warrantable associations between the text and other traditions).
It is notable that literary nonfiction also uses a narrative text structure regularly and half of the reading standards pertain to reading literature. It is also noteworthy that narrative knowing is a key secondary English literacy—well worth our efforts to boost comprehension of this genre.
d. Standards
- NCPTS – North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards
- CCSS – Common Core State Standards English Language Arts
- NCES – North Carolina Essential Standards
a. Importance
There are two general types of thinking according to Jerome Bruner. The first, paradigmatic, describes logical and scientific thinking and are derived from empirical observation. The other, narrative, describes stories created by human beings to help them understand the real world. “For Bruner, narratives are mental, cultural and symbolic structures that allow.”[i] Besides being a mode of communication, stories are an important way of organizing thinking that is critical to being a human being. We use them to organize our world. Most involve…
- Stylized language
- Characters that communicate in an artful manner
- A beginning, middle, and end
- A setting
- A plot
- A theme
- A situation
Because of their importance, teaching students how to read narratives is an important part of their education. Says Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss, “Storytelling is the oldest form of education.” In the elementary and middle school grades, narratives (including “short stories, myths, folk tales, fables, legends, fantasies, mysteries, science fiction, plays, and poetry” make up 85% of the texts read.
b. Challenges for Students
According to the National Institute for Literacy (2007) report, comprehension of high school texts pose many challenges for middle and high school students. “Comprehension varies depending on the text being read. Even proficient readers may have difficulty comprehending particular texts from time to time. Difficulties with comprehension may result from a reader’s unfamiliarity with the content, style, or syntactic structures of the text [58, 63]. Even as adults, many people struggle when reading Shakespeare…”[ii]
The report lists other challenges adolescent face with text comprehension, such as a) lack of sufficient fluency to achieve comprehension, b) lack of comprehension strategies, such as generating questions, summarizing, and clarifying misunderstandings, and c) limited background knowledge in these domains.[iii]
c. Challenges for Teachers
About eight million students between the fourth and twelfth grades have difficulty reading at the level appropriate for their grade, according to a 2004 Carnegie Corporation Report by Gina Biancarosa and Catherine Snow, a situation that overwhelms teachers trying to help students reach grade-level standards.
Because comprehension involves a host of skills, choosing what, when, and how to provide instruction in the following can overwhelm English teachers:
- How to classify characters
- How to analyze plots as four parts: problem, response, action, and outcome.
- How to analyze subplots.
- How to determine the theme
- How to identify character transformations
- What to expect in various narrative genres: short story, novel, romance, satire, tragedy, drama, novel, novella, fantasy, fable, folklore, mystery, myth, realistic fiction, science fiction, thriller, tall tale, picaresque novel, Brit lit, black comedy, graphic novel, historical romance, memoir, cyberpunk.
- To understand narratives as social products
[i] http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~gcla08/upload/abstr31.pdf
[ii] https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/adolescent_literacy07.pdf
[iii] https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/adolescent_literacy07.pdf