Workshopping the Canon
Description
Workshopping the Canon introduces practicing and preservice English language arts teachers to a process for planning and teaching the most frequently taught texts in middle and secondary classrooms using a workshop approach.
Demonstrating how to partner classic texts with a variety of high-interest genres within a reading and writing workshop structure, Mary E. Styslinger aligns the teaching of literature with what we have come to recognize as best practices in the teaching of literacy. Guided by a multitude of teacher voices, student examples, and useful ideas, workshopping teachers explore a unit focus and its essential questions through a variety of reading workshop structures, including read-alouds, independent reading, shared reading, close reading, response engagements, Socratic circles, book clubs, and mini-lessons (e.g., how-to, reading, literary, craft, vocabulary, and critical), as well as writing workshop structures comprising mentor texts, writing plans, mini-lessons, independent writing, conferences, writing circles, and publishing. This book is for every teacher who has struggled to make beloved classic texts relevant to today's young readers.
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Person
Mary E. Styslinger is a professor of English and literacy education at the University of South Carolina where she directed the Midlands Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project, from 2001-2018. She has served as the secondary program coordinator and currently advises students pursuing MT and Ph.D. degrees in secondary English and Literacy education. She taught high school English and theatre in Ohio for 12 years and currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in English and literacy methods. She is a past president of the South Carolina Council of Teachers of English and currently co-edits South Carolina English Teacher. Her interests include: interweaving literacy into the English curriculum, serving marginalized and at-risk youth, and workshopping content and pedagogy for democracy and justice.
Mary is the author of Workshopping the Canon and co-editor of Literacy Behind Bars: Successful Reading and Writing Strategies for Use with Incarcerated Youth and Adults. She has published articles in English Journal, Voices from the Middle, Language Arts, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, English Teaching: Practice and Critique, and Kappan and received grants to fund her research and professional development with teachers from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, South Carolina Reading Initiative, and the National Writing Project. She is currently writing a sequel to Workshopping the Canon.
