Envisioning Literature: Literary Understanding and Literature Instruction

by Judith A. Langer

Book Overview

This updated text argues that literature fosters ways of thinking that go far beyond understanding the conventions of genre and text. It involves literate thinking that takes students beyond improved performance on high-stakes tests and prepares them for their future in the 21st century. This revision of Judith Langer's classic bestseller builds on more than 15 years of research and development projects in elementary, middle, and high schools, in inner-city as well as suburban and rural communities:

New examples to show the kinds of critical, creative, and innovative thinking that are needed for success in the digital-age classroom. A fifth stance added to the Envisionment-building framework toward higher-level understanding, integration, and the building of new concepts.

Filled with examples from across the grades and the voices of students and teachers, this book continues to be a practical and influential resource for the English Language Arts classroom.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807751294
• ISBN13: 9780807751299
• Release Date: December 2010
• Publisher: Teachers College Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.3" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

envisioning new approaches to literature

This is a book for those who question literature teaching the way it has been done so far, and wish it was different. Langer's "envisionment-building" approach considers text interpretations as constant and never-ending processes, always collectively created and in transformation. The literature classroom is therefore an opportunity to share and re-build our interpretive procedures, to review and recreate our sense-making processes. The literary is seen as a way to produce meanings that is present in the everyday process of understanding, and not only when in contact with literary texts. She suggests classroom procedures and gives examples from her own teaching experience to illustrate her views; her writing-style is clear and straightforward, filled with passion for teaching and literature alike. I strongly recommend this book as one of the very few to describe teaching/learning approaches to literature from a theoretical basis without theoretical boredom.