Response-Based Approach to Reading

Wow this isn't what I thought it would be. I'm not sure what I expected, but this took me by surprise in its thoroughness. This is all professionally developed and evidence based. And published in 1994??? No way! Where has the response-based approach gone? Why isn’t this just called teaching by now?

 I guess the reason response-based teaching is not the popular style is because it is totally hard to do. All the teacher prep courses in the world are not preparing me for being in an actual classroom with actual students. I know that teaching based on my students interests and responses would be the ideal situation. It just makes sense for teachers to adjust their lecture and discussion to fit with the ever diverse class at hand, but HOW?

 While reading this I kept thinking about how I could write a lesson plan for this style of teaching. My employer is going to insist on lesson plans, right? But lesson plans are linear models that go from start of topic to finish of unit and TEST. Literature just doesn’t work in straight lines sometimes. In order for this to work we would need a more progressive way to write lesson plans. A plan that includes many branches and subtopics that might never be discussed or might be an intensive part of the unit’s course would be ideal. Instead of a packet of plans this would be volumes.

My multifaceted plan would require cooperation and collaboration between many teachers, perhaps from all over the world, in order to be effective. Take a single text, say The Great Gatsby, my lesson plans would cover every aspect of discussion that has been thought of surrounding the book. Then each aspect or possibility would be explored to a productive end. If I possessed such an inclusive lesson plan then my class could begin the book and I would be mostly prepared to tackle almost any thought stream my class pounced on. “Almost” being a key word here because my students will surely come up with a new way to look at a chapter or a scene that no one has ever thought of before. Then I would explore their thinking and create my lesson plan as I taught and then contribute my classes work to the ever evolving multifaceted lesson plan available to all teachers who want to use The Great Gatsby in their classrooms around the world. Such a database of lesson planning would be amazing and useful and helpful for every teacher, every student, in every school on Earth.