Teaching Literary Strategies in Children's Books Essay

Teaching Literary Strategies in Children's Books - Essay Example Nodelman and Mavis also state that there are many strategies that can be used in order to help children become aware of good literature. According to these authors, the children are helped even more if they also enjoy literature; if they do, they are able to teach their students better. 1.1 What to Teach Nodelman and Reimer suggest that teachers must teach their students the techniques that people who read literature on a regular basis use (34). This basically means that children must learn how to interact with literature by making good choices of what to read and by being motivated to read, because what they read is interesting. As an example, in this author’s opinion, one of the reasons the Harry Potter books became so popular was because children of all ages (including adults) could read and enjoy the books. Readers were motivated to read each book as it came out because J.K. Rowling left something for readers to wonder about at the end of each book. The books are fun, inte resting, and they make the reader want to go to the land of Hogwarts. For some children and adults, Harry Potter may have created an interest in other book series like the Hobbit or Narnia books because they were also interesting and able to take the reader into these far away lands. The research done by Nodelman and Reimer provide several ideas for teaching literary strategies that they learned from observing children and teachers in Britain. Some of these were: Children need to have a variety of literature to read in their homes and parents need to love and read literature also to set the example. Children need to be able to read a variety of literature from comic books to nonfiction and fiction. Teachers should allow students to choose from a variety of literature in their classrooms and children should have a say in the books they want to discuss in class. Parents can encourage their children by becoming familiar with the books their children are reading and talking to them abou t the books. These are a few of the many tips that are available to help teach a love of literature to children. The rest of this research paper will discuss a variety of strategies that have been used to teach this topic. 2 Teacher Strategies for Teaching Literature Helping children learn is a major reason to promote the teaching of literature. The reason literature is important is because it can be used to teach across the curriculum. This discussion begins with Gail Goss, a teacher who combines children’s literature and her students’ interests to help them learn easier. Goss suggests an interdisciplinary approach because it: 1. Increases the student’s curiosity in a subject and makes them want to read. 2. By using several content areas, students make a connection between any of their subjects. 3. This allows the teacher to provide â€Å"real world† activities like â€Å"researching, collecting and synthesizing data †¦ narrative reports, and it he lps to connect students with real world situations† (Goss 4). Goss uses the theme of cats to work with her students and uses a variety of literature about cats. As an example, she uses the books Puss ad Boots and Cats of Myth to teach grammar. Children