Taking Rosenblatt to School: Seventh-Grade Students' Understandings of Self as Reader

• In Event: Issues in Middle-Level Curriculum and Instruction

Abstract

The teacher researcher in this practitioner inquiry examined ways that the culture of high stakes testing influenced one diverse, urban seventh grade ELA students’ conceptions of reading. The teacher researcher taught her middle grades students Rosenblatt’s (1978) and Langer’s (1995) theories of response to literature in an attempt to broaden students’ conceptions of reading; students used these theories to develop and refine their own understandings of self as readers and used the frameworks to develop reading skills for tests and content area reading. Students also (re)discovered pleasure in reading.

Author

• Mary Beth Schaefer, Saint John's University