Reading Response

Question: How do students respond to what they read?

Answer: Sets up a research study with the class. Students read  a poem and then they respond in writing to what they had read. The teacher classifies the responses into “text-based responses” and “reader-based responses.”

“Text-based responses” included the way the poem sounded, theme, questions about the title, evaluation (“good,” “humorous,” “cute,” etc.) identification of the narrator. “Reader-based responses,” were personal, about memories and experiences related to the ideas in the poem.

Comment: For what purpose? Perhaps to illustrate the differences between the New Critics’ approach to interpreting literature and Rosenblatt’s reader-based involvement in interpreting a piece of literature. In my mind, both approaches help to interpret a piece of literature. RayS.

 Title: “Turning Teenagers into Reader Response Researchers.” S Kane. Journal of Reading (February 1991), 399-401.