Reading Stories
by Bronwyn Mellor, Marnie O’Neill & Annette PattersonStudent book Year 10+
What expectations do readers have of stories? Where do readers’ expectations come from? Do certain kinds of readings serve to support particular beliefs and assumptions? These and other questions are raised in Reading Stories, a collection of eleven short stories that have been very popular with Year 10 classes and above, accompanied by activities for talk and writing that encourage students to reflect on stories and their reading of them. Reading Stories aims to make recent literary theory accessible to students through a range of practical activities that work well in the classroom. Each story’s accompanying activities are designed to give students not only the opportunity but also the support they might need to construct and analyse possible readings of the text.
There are five chapters - offering a cumulative learning experience - that consider such areas as readers’ expectations, how and why readings change, what is at stake in the disagreements between readings, and reading for gender, race and class.
The approaches used begin with students’ familiarity with stories and then work to make available for analysis aspects of reading and ‘interpretation’ that are often taken for granted. While the concepts addressed are complex, the book aims to encourage participation from all students.
RRP $27.95
A4 124pp ISBN 0 958 7924 0 2
A Chalkface Press original
Review
Reading Stories is a superb contribution to the methodology of reading and teaching literature.
Jack Thomson, AATE Guide, 84, June 1988
Cover illustration: © Kerry Stokes, Western Australia. Private Collection.
Availability:
Australia:
- Campion Education
- State English Teachers' Associations
- Retail and educational booksellers
- Chalkface Press direct
- NZATE, New Zealand Association for the Teaching of English
- NCTE, National Council of Teachers of English
- English & Media Centre, London
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Rights available for:
- any language other than English - world-wide