How Do We Use Literature Based Approach in the Classroom

In using this Literature Based Approach for teaching English or other subject areas for that matter, there are many factors that must be well thought of, planned for and organized to ensure the effectiveness and effeciency of its use and intended purpose.

• students level of deveopment and learning needs; recognising that students develop at different rates and learn differently. A knowledge of this will aid teachers in the next step of

• Selecting the appropriate text/material that is reflective and respectful of students interest, cultural background, socio-economic status. Teachers should include a variety of books in order to provide students with a rich, meaningful reading experience. These books could be of the same author, across genres, or thematically bonded.

• ensure that students are given suffiecient opportunities to respond to text in a variety of ways that not only suits their personality as a means of empowering students but futher develops their literacy skills of reading and writing simultaneously. This also helps the teacher and students clarify any misconceptions that may arrive and redirect students on the correct thought path as it relates to the text.

• while the teacher may expose students to more complex text to help generate critical thinking, he/she must be careful not to go too complex. Exposing students to new and widerange vocabulary is good but not when it detracts from the essence of the story and repels rather than stimulates students interest.
• ensure sufficient and quality scaffolding. reading aloud and providing students with writing materials

• provides students with a model of the language (grammar, pronunciation, articulation, word usage)

• teachers can also share their own experiences with students, become a "teacher in role" as an active-interactive participant. Students enjoy hearing their teachers stories and it further stimulates interests

• encourage debates and role play where students become a particular character which could either be from the text or may well be the author of those texts. Such activities require students to do research (whether through reading or actual interviews) , categorise and organize information, therebey developing higher order thinking skills.

• through inferential reading students recognise and underline unfamiliar words and may use the dictionary or context clues to derive meaning. Identifying key terms and words/phrase can also help students make predictions and inferences about the story

• use effective questioning to guide students into better organizing ideas and opinions for better understanding. REMEMBER:

Be CREATIVE but INTENTIONAL!!!

http://www.jstor.org/pss/20200371