Farewell to a Farewell to Arms: Deemphasizing the Whole-Class Novel
Author(s): Douglas Fisher and Gay Ivey
Source: The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 88, No. 7 (Mar., 2007), pp. 494-497
Published by: Phi Delta Kappa International
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Fa
A
to
rewellI
Farewell
to
DEEMPHASIZING
Arms:
THE WHOLE-CLASS
NOVEL
The common practice inEnglish language arts classes of assigning all
students to read the same book at the same time is a tradition, the authors
believe, that would be more honored in the breach than the observance.
BY DOUGLAS
FISHER AND GAY IVEY
SKANY group of adults ranging in age from their
early twenties to late fiftieswhat they remember
middle or high school reading, and you will
abDout
no doubt hear an unenthusiastic
and often bitter,.-,
chorus of such titles as ToKill aMockingbird, Lo
of the Flies, and other classic novels longcon
sidered standardand acceptable fare inEnglish
classrooms. The younger setmay chime inwith
Parrot in theOven, Looking forAlaska, or some other young-adult
novels that have become contemporary classics.
Not many adults have greatmemories of assigned readingfromEnglish
class, yet the one-size-fits-all class novel persists as the centerpiece of
instruction inmany micidle and high school classrooms.As teacher
educators and former English and reading teachers, we also know that
getting stucdentsto read these selections continues to be difficult,even in
the best of circumstances.A high schoolmemory sums up thissituationfor i
us. Gay recalls a nighttime bus ride back from a National Honor Society,
field trilp to an amusement park near the end of her junior year. Nearly4 -a
thirdof the studentsclusteredat theback of thebuswith theCliffsNotes for
The ScarletLetter,not because they needed to read itby the following
morning but because they had to read itandwrite a critical analysis of it
by the followingmorning! Even for these high-achieving high-schoolers,
the goal was just to get the assignment finished.:
5'
[DOUGLAS FISHER ix a?protessor- ot lanvu u>e and literacy ediucation at San Diego State Univei
sitv.
494
tf
is
ssor ot
literacy at JamesMadison University,
Ha.
G-AY'IVEY) an/ assoc(iatet /)rot&
readcinga7nd
PHI DELTAKAPPAN
Photo: PhotoSpin
Forstrugglingstudents, the choice isapt to be noncom
pliance. Often, the teacher notices that the students have
not read the text and so reads it to them.We know that
teacher read-aloudsare a powerful tool forbuilding vocab
ulary and background knowledge, butwe worry that they
are being used to supplant assigned readings.Read-alouds
should extend students' thinking, not replace it.
we
1w4O4
4AL44e44$
,
d4i444i
-
-49
b 4t4.
,
vary too greatly, and every class has students who read
above or below theirgrade level.
The bottom line is that,when teachersrequireall students
to read the same book at the same time, English classes
are neither standard-centered nor student-centered. As a
result, these classes can respond neither to the academic
agenda (i.e., the sanctioned curriculumas defined by stan
eVC44
W
44
44
As an alternative, in the hope that students can be co
dards)nor to the studentagenda (i.e., reading,writing, speak
ing,and listeningthatsatisfystudents'own reasons to know,
erced into reading a novel that they have been assigned,
experience, and relate).Radical as itmay seem to.some read
teachers often resort to testing their knowledge about it.
ers, to us it'sonly common sense to reconsider the use of
Some teachers give oral summaries of the contents so that
thewhole-class novel.
studentswho have not completed their assigned readings
can "keep up."Others show the film version so that stu
dents have a sense of the content. Regardless ofwhich al
WIDE, FOCUSED READING
ternative isselected, studentsare not readingmore or read
AS AN ALTERNATIVE
ingbetter as a resultof thewhole-class novel. Instead,stu
dents are reading lessand are lessmotivated, lessengaged,
Class novels may actually limit or restrict the variety,
teachers
in
and less likely to read the future.Meanwhile,
depth, and quantity of students' reading.We would argue
continue their endless- and often fruitless- search for
thatwe can expand students' reading by significantly in
betterways to persuadestudentsto readtheirassignednovel.'
creasing the number and variety of texts inEnglish class
Given this frustrationand resistance,what is itabout a
rooms and by offering a greater number of creative oppor
"class set" of novels thatcaptivates teachers so much that
tunities to read in school.We have identified a number of
We of
itsuse dominates English language arts instruction?
factorsnecessary to balance students'preferences for read
ten hear thatcurriculumstandardsdictate the decision and
ingwith the demands of a standards-drivencurriculum.4
require, for example, that all sixth-gradersread The Giver
As an alternative to using thewhole-class novel, we offer
or thatall ninth-gradersreadRomeo andJuliet. (Of course,
teachers five guidelines for practice.
the latter is a play, not a novel, but it is typically assigned
1. Identifyuniversal themes ratherthan individualbooks
and taught in the same way.) But even a cursory review of
as a way of guiding instruction.Inour professionaldevelop
content standards from several state departments of edu
ment work with teachers inmiddle and high schools, we
cation reveals that specific texts and authors are not actu
are consistently asked how to get students motivated to
ally named. Rather, students are expected to learnhow to
read.We suspect that the real question, the question be
read,write, and speak about a varietyof texts,and the stan
hind the question, is "How do we get students to read The
dards typically emphasize literarydevices, reading com
Iliad?"(Choose any other institutionalized assignment if
prehension skills, and writing strategies.
Homer didn'tmake your school's list this year.)
We also hear quite frequently that class novels are se
Research offers excellent advice on getting students to
lected because they are "good for students."Butwe know
read:choose texts thatmatter to students,5create contexts
thatclassics- and even award-winningcontemporaryclas
inwhich students find intrinsicreasons to read ratherthan
sics do not make the listof what adolescents prefer to
reasons related to external rewardsor consequences,6 and
read.2Inaddition,we know that students still struggling to
provide time to read in school.7Butmotivation isalsomulti
read do not get better at reading from tackling difficult
dimensional and may be heavily influenced by such fac
books.3 Itwould be hard to locate one book thataddresses
tors as the student's own "perceived competence."8 The
the needs of all students in any given classroom. Life ex
class-novel experience rarelymeets these criteria. Instead,
periences that enable a reader to make sense of a book
you have studentswith a text they do not like,which they
MARCH 2007
495
are directed to read forpurposes other than theirown, with
little time in school to do so. To top it off, the books are
typically so difficult that students feel overmatched by the
challenges they present.And that feeling isnot unreason
able, since these are the same kinds of texts that intimi
date even competent adult readers.
W444
it4k1~~~4ZsO
v
4d*
AU4%0MA4t.,
Insteadof defining instruction inEnglish language arts
by the books ("Iteach TheOdyssey." "IteachOld Yeller."),
teachers should focus instructionon big ideas or univer
sal themes, such as "TheHero's Journey,""Mattersof Life
and Death," or "AretheGreeks and Romans stillwith us to
day?"These ideas and concepts are surelywithin the grasp
of most students, but it isdifficult to findout what students
know and can do within the context of one very hard book.
Big ideas pique students' interestand allow every student
in the class to engage with the topic using his or her own
background, interests,and skills.
2. Select texts thatspan a wide rangeof difficulty levels.
Ifour goal is to encourage students to readmore and bet
ter, thenwe have to ensure that they are reading books
they can read. Simply requiring students to read "grade
level" textswill not improve their skills. However, invit
ing students to readwidely in response to a big idea, ques
tion, or theme requires that they have access to a signifi
cant number of books at a variety of levels of difficulty that
provide diverse perspectives on the topic.
By theway, we don't want readers to thinkwe're op
posed to the specific books we've named in this article. In
fact, they and myriad other "classics"are excellent exam
ples of literature.Charlotte'sWeb might be a highly suitable
addition to a collection of cutting-edge young adult and
children'sbooks thatexplore the theme of friendshipswith
responsibility.Similarly,ToKill aMockingbird might be an
appropriateoption ina studyof discrimination, racism,and
prejudice, but itneed not be given higher status thanmore
student-friendly,high-interest books on the topic, such as
Chris Crowe's Getting Away With Murder: The TrueStory
of theEmmettTillCase or ToniMorrison's Remember: The
Journey toSchool Integration.
Our experience suggests that,when students readwide
ly frombooks they have selected, they aremore prepared
496
PHI DELTA KAPPAN
to discuss the books with theirpeers and towrite complex
analyses of the themes and ideas.What's more, they are
motivated to readmore.
3. Select texts thataddress contemporary issuesand that
are engaging. Studentswant to readabout things thatmat
ter to them.They want to think, form opinions, challenge
?4s
4sw,41
ewti,~
W.w44~
and be challenged, and learn.Studentswant to readwide
ly inmultiple genres andmedia- graphic novels, manga,
Internetsites, informational texts, and so on. All of these
text sources can be used as students consider the big idea
or theme that the class is exploring together.Themes we
select should allow students to engage with contemporary
issues
issuesthat theyandwe are strugglingwith- while
readingboth currentand classicworks.We agreewith liter
ary scholarswho suggest that literatureprovides the reader
with a mirror to examine oneself, awindow to consider alter
native experiences and beliefs, and a door towalk through
foreverchanged.We justhaven't found the book thatdoes
this for every member of every class at the same time.
4. Orchestrate instruction thatbuilds students' compe
tence.Another drawback of thewhole-class novel is the
type of instruction it engenders. Teachers using a single
book with a group of students often revertto lecturingand
assigning independent reading. From the perspective of
the students, the teacher knows everything (from the "cor
rect" symbolism to the appropriate predictions), and stu
dents have permission to remain passive.
Turningthis situationaround so that the teacherprovides
modeling, coaching, scaffolding, and guiding requires that
the teacher use time differently. For example, the expert
teacherswe love towatch startwith a read-aloudor shared
reading.This time is not used to read something that the
students should have already readbut isan opportunity for
the teacher to share his or her thinking about a textwith
the class.Then studentsmove intogroups- some are read
ing, others are discussing books, others arewriting or get
ting peer feedback on theirwriting- while the teacher
meets with specific students to provide guided instruction.
This organizational system allows teachers to move
fromassuming "all the responsibility forperforming a task
. . . to a situation inwhich the students assume all of the
responsibility."9Inotherwords, the teacherguides students
through texts and models comprehension along theway.
As students develop their understanding of the theme or
response to the big idea or question, they are developing
skills, building competence and confidence, and learning
with and through texts.And as the students' skillsdevelop,
teachersgraduallycede to them the responsibilityfor learn
ing.
5. Teach literarydevices and readingcomprehensionstrat
egies using texts thatare readable and meaningful. As we
have noted, the content standards inEnglish language arts
do not name or test students' knowledge of specific texts
or authors. Instead, students are expected to learnhow to
draw inferences from a text as a way of making sense of
it.But students are not likely to have vast experience with
inferringorwith appreciating and understanding how an
author uses particular literarydevices to enrich a textor to
contribute to a theme. Their lack of experience is com
pounded when most instructionaltime isconsumed by ef
fortsto get them to "get the story"of a few specific texts that
theymay not find interestingor thatmay be too difficult for
them. Fartoo often,we tryto teach to content standardsby
requiringthat students readbookswith difficultvocabulary
and concepts. The problem is thatcomprehension tools and
literarydevices don't jumpout at the reader indifficult texts;
students simply don't get good at reading comprehension,
understanding literarydevices, literaryresponse,or writing
by readinghard books. Studentsdon't learnhow towrite a
persuasive textor how an omniscient point of view works
from reading one difficult short story.
Students do develop an understanding of and appreci
ation forpersuasiveargumentsby readinga numberof texts,
across genres and topics that they are accessible to them.
And students do develop the ability to make inferences
through repeated practice,
firstwith very obvious
examples
modeled by the teacher and thenwith increasingly com
plex examples towhich they applywhat they have learned
independently.
While we don't know of studentswho got better at read
ing or learned to understand the classics through a focus
on whole-class reading,we do know a significant num
ber of studentswho got better at reading and who started
readingmore widely and frequently because their teach
ers used a range of texts, organized the course around a
theme or big idea, and then provided instruction as out
lined in their state'scontent standards.We are on the same
page as children's authorWalter Dean Myers, who writes,
"It isonly when readershave the ability to fully absorb the
material being read that the process becomes pleasurable
The whole-class novel
and a lifelong reader is-created."'0
assigned as independent readingwon't help students 'fully
absorb thematerial."Helping that to happen takesa skilled
teacherwho guides his or her students throughmultiple
texts, genres, and standards.
A common statementmade by some English language
arts teachers is that students need to know Shakespeare or
Walt Whitman before they graduate. Should this "knowl
edge" be acquired at the expense of students' knowing
how to readandwrite independentlyand purposefully for
awide rangeof reasons?Traditional instruction inEnglish
language arts actually limits the reading and writing stu
dents can produce. Let'swork instead on expanding stu
dents' understanding, interests,and thinking.
The Outsiders,"
1. Joanne S. Gillespie,
Inside S. E. Hinton's
Eng
"Getting
and Gustave Weltsek,
lish Journal,
pp. 44-48;
"Using
January 2006,
to Deconstruct
A Midsummer
Process Drama
Night's Dream,"
English
2005, pp. 75-81.
Journal, September
"'Just Plain Reading': A Survey ofWhat
Ivey and Karen Broaddus,
to Read inMiddle
Students Want
School Classrooms,"
Reading
and JoWorthy, Megan
vol. 36, 2001, pp. 350-77;
Research Quarterly
and Margo Turner, "What Johnny Likes to Read IsHard to Find
Moorman,
2. Gay
Makes
vol. 34, 1999, pp. 12-27.
Reading Research Quarterly,
for Struggling Readers: De
L. Allington, What Really Matters
and
Research-Based
Programs, 2nd ed. (New York: Pearson/Allyn
2006); and Gay
Fisher, "Learning from What
Ivey and Douglas
Educational
2005, pp. 8-17.
Work,"
Leadership, October
in School,"
3. Richard
signing
Bacon,
Doesn't
4. Gay Ivey and Douglas
Fisher, Creating
Literacy-Rich
for Supervision
lescents
(Alexandria, Va.: Association
2006).
Development,
5.
Ivey and Broaddus,
op.
cit.; and Worthy,
Moorman,
for Ado
Schools
and Curriculum
and Turner,
op.
cit.
6. Allan Wigfield
tion for Reading
of Educational
"Relations of Children's Motiva
and John T. Guthrie,
to the Amount
and Breadth of Their Reading,"
Journal
vol. 89, 1997, pp. 420-32.
Psychology,
7. Ivey and Broaddus,
op. cit.
8. Linda Baker and Allan Wigfield,
"Dimensions
of Children's Motiva
to Reading Activity
and Reading
for Reading
and Their Relations
vol. 34, 1999, pp. 452-77.
Achievement,"
Reading Research Quarterly,
for Develop
"Effective Practices
9. Nell K. Duke and P. David Pearson,
in Alan Farstrup and Jay Samuels,
eds.,
ing Reading Comprehension,"
What Research Has to Say About Reading
Instruction, 3rd ed. (Newark,
Del.:
International
2002), p. 211.
Reading Association,
tion
10. Walter
Journal,
Dean Myers,
"Writing for the Uninspired
K
January 2005, p. 36.
Reader,"
English
2IPAL
"Yes, Idid write, 'Do not deface school property' on my
desk. But she askedme to use 'oxymoron' in context!"
MARCH 2007
497