Prospero's Magic : Active Learning Strategies for the Teaching of Literature
One of the foundation beliefs behind my teaching is that educators need to relinquish control—gradually and in an organized fashion—over the school year.  We need, in other words, to teach our students how to read and discuss and involve themselves in a work of literature without being totally dependent upon the instructor.  This does not happen by magic.  It does not happen when we merely “assign” reading without preparing students for entry into the imaginary world and without showing them how to talk about what they have read, and it will not happen if we “assign” reading and expect students to sit still for our words of wisdom about it.  I find that it happens slowly, methodically, over time as they become more and more accustomed to being intimately connected to the process of making meaning out of what they read.  One of the goals of this book is to help teachers who are looking for ways to activate that connection between the reader and the world the author has created.  The magic, then, occurs not with what the teacher does but with what they—the students, the readers—do with the literature.   The first two chapters focus on thinking skills and discussion approaches that can be employed with any work of literature.  Although Great Expectations and The Count of Monte Cristo, for example, are the specific texts used in the first two discussion strategies of the second chapter, the methodologies will work with any literary text; in fact, the activities described throughout this book can be adapted for use with any work of literature.you teach.Michael Degen