- Hi, everybody, we are live. I am Brett from Heinemann.
Tonight we're talking about the new book
Beyond Literary Analysis, teaching students to write
with passion and authority about any text.
It's written by Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell.
Who say and write redefining text
and offer practical lessons that help students
discover analysis in the wild
and use high interest mentor text for students
to write their own analysis on topics that matter to them.
Co-author Rebekah O'Dell is joining me live
to talk about Beyond Literary Analysis.
Welcome Rebekah. - Hi thank-you.
- So let's just jump right into it.
Tell us a little bit about this book.
- Yeah well this book really came out
of trying to solve a problem.
Alison and I loved writing workshop
and when we were doing narratives with our students
and upads and poetry. Our kids were so engaged
and so original and creative in their thinking
and they were really working through the writing process
and everything was going right.
And then every time we got to literary analysis,
tragedy struck and suddenly all of the life
and the zest and the fun of writing workshop fell flat
and we were doing all of the things that we knew how to do.
We were giving them as much choice
as we could possibly give them,
but every time we got to literary analysis
which felt like the thing we were supposed to be doing
as secondary teachers; something just wasn't working.
The introduction of this book shows the text conversation
between me and Allison one night when we were at home
grading papers about the Catcher in the Rye
and wishing we were doing anything but grading papers
about the Catcher in the Rye,
because there is a whole big world
of analytical writing that we love to read.
I just finished watching the new season of Black Mirror
and every episode I finished,
the first thing I did was run to my computer
to see what people were writing
about that episode of Black Mirror.
Which things hadn't I caught?
Which Easter eggs had I missed?
And so you know we knew that our kids
love that kind of writing too.
We have so many students who are like glued to their phones
in the hallway because they're reading sports analysis.
But when it came to writing about the deeper meanings
in the Catcher in the Rye, something just wasn't working.
Really this book was born out of a journey
that we took to try to figure out how to bridge that gap.
How do we get our students who are passionate
about so many things to write the kind of analysis
that we want to read and while
some of our students are really passionate about literature;
I was when I was a high-schooler,
I would have wanted to write about the Catcher in the Rye
but I am in a small minority
and so so many of our students couldn't engage that way,
but they can bring their passions to the class.
Music and television and video-games and sports
and when we allow them to sort of dictate the content.
Then we can teach them how to write
really sophisticated analysis
which is something we were missing before.
So the book is really broken down into three parts.
Part one kind of our theory, we're walking you through
why literary analysis only doesn't work.
We're talking about sort of the history
of where that even comes from in English class
and why we secondary teachers have this idea in our heads
that this is the thing we're supposed to be doing.
And then we sort of break that down for you
and offer you the alternative which is analysis in the wild.
Literary analysis, but also all the other kinds of analysis.
Something I love about part one, is that we offer you
three full length mentor texts in this section.
So this one is from the Atlantic
and it's a piece about the Odyssey
and you can see we give you our annotations in the margins
where we're walking you through
where we see this writer writing
about literature in the real world.
A professional writer writing about literature
in a journalistic way and how she's doing
the kinds of things we wish our students were doing.
We give you a full-length mentor text
of one of my seniors writing about a video-game .
The video-game inside and so we give you that whole piece
so that you can get a vision for what kids can do
when we unleash them and say analyze anything you want,
analyze the thing that you love best.
And then we also give you a piece of music analysis
from Kim Tucker who's one of our favorite mentors from NPR
and we walk you through the four essential elements
or the four essential tools of analysis,
because you might be wondering,
"if you're not teaching literary analysis,
"then what are you teaching these kids in a writing unit?
"and if every kid is writing in a different subgenre
"what do you have in common?"
And so that's part two of this book.
Part two takes you through the four essential tools
of analysis and this is what you're gonna be teaching.
The tools are passion, ideas, structure and authority.
That's what every piece of analytical writing has
from political analysis of a political debate
to sports analysis to film analysis to business analysis.
My mom works for a big corporation
and she just sent me something that she wrote last weekend
and we giggled because it had passion
and ideas and structure and authority
even from the business world.
So in this section we start...so this is exploring ideas.
These are just lessons and activities and ideas
for you to take into your classroom tomorrow
to teach these four tools.
We start with this cool chart
in each of these chapters.
If you see this in students writing try this.
And it takes you to an activity or to a lesson in this book
that would solve this student problem.
So "if you see that students ideas
"are stale regurgitations of class discussion"
Have you ever had that happen? (laughter)
Then we give you about seven ways that you could attack that
and then we take you through these activities.
You can see here's one: question flooding your topic
is a way to get to original ideas
and we really wanted to break this down
so that this book could sit on the edge of your desk
and you could grab it at a moment's notice
and be like okay let's go, you know?
So we've broken it down into steps
of the lessons, examples; we give you some of our visuals
that we use with our kids.
And this is where I'm question flooding Adele
to come up with an original claim about Adele.
And you can use these so many ways.
This could be a whole class lesson.
The last time I did this, the question flooding your topic,
last spring, I did it as a whole class lesson,
but this could be for small groups,
this could be even just a one on one writing conference
where you see a need in a kid's writing
and you say okay we need to do something
to address this what can we do?
And you can grab your book.
So we do this for finding students' passions,
harnessing those passions so they know
what they're gonna write about.
Coming up with original nuanced sophisticated ideas
you haven't heard a bajillion times before,
finding an organic structure;
a structure that really makes sense
for that piece of writing, because I think
as soon as I say literary analysis
most of us are thinking five paragraph essay.
And in the real world we know that doesn't really exist
and so how do we help do kids do something else?
How do we help them write with structure
and write with organization that's not in five paragraphs?
And then one of my favorite, very favorite chapters
in this book is authority.
It's the last one in part two, it's the last tool
and in there we talk about how to make kids
sound like experts, because we know that's
sort of what we love about really good analytical writing
is that we learn and discover so much,
because the writer is an expert.
So how do we leverage kids expertise?
and how do we help a seventh grader get more expertise?
so that they can have that same kind of bang
in their writing that a pro does.
And then the last section, Part three,
is really just resources galore,
because when we started this, when we said
"let's just try to let the kids analyze anything
"and see what happens".
We kind of panicked cause we thought
"Well gosh, I mean, I know a lot about TV
"because I watch all the TV shows
"and I know a lot about literature,
"but if my students want to write sports analysis
"I'm up a creek and probably even worse
if they wanna write about video-games."
So we thought of you, if that is you.
So in every one of the chapters, in part three, which are
music and television analysis, sports analysis,
music analysis, video game analysis and literary analysis.
But the kind of literary analysis that real writers write,
not the kind that we do in school.
We introduce you to what writers explore.
So in other words what are my kids supposed to be
talking about if they're talking about video-games?
We give you examples of those things from mentor texts.
We have hundreds and hundreds of pieces
of professional analysis referenced in this book
and you could use, you know, this could be your lesson.
Right? Sit with a student, let's look at this.
What is the writer doing here?
How could you do something similar in your piece?
But also you could go online
and pull up this whole mentor text
and you have something to put in their hands right away.
After we talked about what those writers explore
we give you a chart in each of these chapters
where to find it.
So we send you to websites, we send you to podcasts,
magazines, places where you're likely to find
really smart analysis of this kind.
We give you key mentors.
You know, you might say to that student
writing video-game analysis:
"You know Joe, I'm not sure exactly how writers
"who are analyzing video-games
"usually conclude their pieces,
"but Chloe Rad is an amazing writer
"who writes about video-games.
"Here's her twitter handle, why don't you
"google her and see what she does?"
You know, you can direct kids right to the mentors
who are the top in their field.
Doing this kind of writing.
And then we help you figure out how to translate
your students ideas into an actual piece of writing.
I'm trying to show you.
So if your student says,
"I want to write about the music in a video-game."
Then that could maybe look like a listicle
in which the writer ranks the theme songs
of different characters in the game
and talks about what makes that song effective or not
and then we take you to a mentor text
that's doing that same thing.
So we're trying to help you
sort of at every phase of this process.
Connect with your kids, get a sense of what good analysis,
what successful analysis is going to look like
and also to give you things that you can give them.
Things that you can put in their hands
to make them better, stronger writers.
And then we end the very last chapter of this book,
is a make your own resources chapter,
because we given you kind of the top five,
the five we see the most often with our students,
but I've had students in the past
want to analyze a fashion trend
or analyze a ballet performance
or analyze... Oh I had someone last year
who wanted to analyze a card game and I didn't know
and my handy-dandy book didn't tell me anything about that.
So in the last chapter of the book we try
to walk you through our thinking process
so that you could find these resources
regardless of what your students wanna write.
- I'm just looking at the questions here,
we've got a couple of comments - Yes!
- in the comments box here, a lot of people are finding this
very relatable, a lot of people are saying that,
you know, you've really hit on the frustrations
that they have felt in the classroom as well.
Talk a little bit more about definitely,
how you've redefined the term text.
You said at the beginning of this, that you really,
you and Allison look at texts differently
- Yeah - across the board.
- Talk a little bit more about that.
- Sure so when we look at standards,
state standards, common course standards,
the standards that your school district has.
So many of them talk about students being able to
closely read a text, to interpret a text,
to write arguments about a text
and so we started thinking, you know,
does the text have to be a book?
And does it have to be a classic book?
And does it have to be words on the page?
So we really expanded this definition of text
so that you can meet your standards
and so that your students can learn how to talk
about a text, but it doesn't have to be the scarlet letter.
So to us, a text is anything with a beginning, middle
and an end, that can be broken down into smaller pieces
so that it can be closely read and analyzed.
At the beginning of the book,
we have a fun chart called text not a text.
And it's actually an activity
that you can use with your students,
but we talk about let's say for example: the LA Lakers.
The LA Lakers are not a text. (laughter)
There's no beginning middle and end there right?
You have a student who's like,
"I wanna write and analysis of the Lakers"
well that's a whole lot of basketball
they would have to be tackling.
So we try to narrow that down
and we say okay a beginning middle and an end.
And so that may be the Lakers 2016 season.
That has a beginning middle and an end
and we could break it down into smaller parts,
the individual games, right?
To analyze it and say what made ... or broke
made or broke the Lakers season last year.
You know similarly, Adele. Adele herself, not a text,
but Adele's album could be a text.
You know, Adele's career in the the last three years.
Beginning, middle and end;
Smaller parts we could break down.
Or we could get really, really tiny:
one Adele song or Adele's first ever Grammy performance.
So when think that way, when we think that a text is
anything that has sort of temporal boundaries,
a beginning middle and an end
and smaller pieces that we can analyze.
Then our kids get to bring everything with them right?
They get to bring all of the things that they love
and that they really are already experts on to class
and then when they do that, when they bring the expertise,
and they bring the knowledge and they bring the passion,
you no longer have to teach that.
We get really, really lucky.
We get to teach just the writing
and if I'm teaching just the writing,
if I'm teaching just the skills
that make really smart analysis that I can do.
If I have to teach all of the Scarlet Letter
and all of the themes of the Scarlet Letter
and all the historical background of the Scarlet Letter
and try to teach the how to write about the Scarlet Letter
that's when we run into trouble.
So this really makes everyone happier,
but it also just makes everyone more successful. (laughter)
- Something else you mentioned,
that I think is really important to talk about
is, you know, you and Allison,
you're both in the classroom, you're both teaching everyday,
This is not just a book about theory.
This a book from your classroom with examples
of things that we can apply immediately tomorrow.
Talk a little bit about, those examples that we can apply.
- Yeah. I mean, you know, Allison and I
with Writing With Mentors and with Beyond Literary Analysis,
we always say that we want to write the books
that we wish we had.
We want to write the books that we wish
were on our book shelves.
And so, you know, part one I think is really important.
The theory about why the way we've been doing analysis
in English class for the last sixty years
just isn't enough anymore.
But we really wanted this to be a book
that like yes you can get this delivered to your home
and sit and read it cover to cover,
but we want it to be so much more than that.
We really want it to be a reference guide
and to sit with your plan book
so that when you are planning
and you're like, "Oh my goodness my kids
"just do not know anything about structure."
You can turn really quickly, find an activity
and it can go in you plan book, it can go in your classroom.
You know your students best of course
so you're gonna know maybe that they need
a different example, that your kids aren't into basketball.
Mine are like only into basketball, but you might say,
"No my kids are really, they're soccer kids,
"like we need a soccer example"
and you can go find one, but, if you don't want to
or you're not feeling confident with that yet
or you know, like that class is coming in in five minutes
and you need something to do right now,
we've got that for you.
So we wanted it to be something that can grow with you,
that as you practice this with your kids
and as you see it in action you can change it up,
you can adapt it to meet your students' needs,
but that it also can be something
that you just take with you right now and apply,
because the lessons are there, the mentor texts are there,
the resources are already there.
- And getting a few questions on this one,
what are the age ranges that this book is best applied to?
- Yeah, so the book is really aimed at six through twelve.
Allison and I, both have had experience
teaching middle school and high-school.
The examples you'll see in this book
are from 8th grade, 9th grade and 12th grade.
I am doing this right now with my seventh graders.
So, you know, I can attest to
that while I've done it with seniors out of the door,
this really can work with younger students as well
and I have to tell you, I mean,
the quality of what I'm seeing from 7th graders right now
isn't all that different from what I saw from older kids,
because kids know what they know.
And so the real key is that passion and that expertise
and so, you know a seventh grader
who is in love with a video-game
can do this as successfully as a senior
who's in love with a particular movie.
- Well, I think we have covered a lot.
We've got you and Allison on the Heinemann podcast
that's gonna be releasing this Friday.
Is there anything else we wanna add
before we wrap up with everybody?
- No. Thanks for tuning in guys.
- Alright, thank-you Rebekah especially
for taking the time to talk to all of us tonight.
Again the book is "Beyond Literary Analysis.
"Teaching students to write with passion
"and authority about any text"
it's written by Alison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell.
Who joined us live tonight on Facebook so thank-you Rebekah.
- Thank-you.
And do check out the Heinemann podcast
where you can hear from both Allison and Rebekah.
On the Heinemann podcast later this week.
We're gonna be posting that on Friday.
so do tune in for that, we'll post it here on Facebook
and Twitter and Instagram and everywhere else
that we're able to talk to you.
So thanks everybody for joining us tonight.
We really enjoyed being able to connect with you.
- [Rebekah] Yeah thanks