Chapters 9 & 10 of YAL in the 21st Century

The Sophomore English class I teach has a short story unit.  It's at the beginning of the year in an attempt to incorporate literary elements early on, as well as to ease kids in to literary analysis.  The stories we read are:

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe
A & P by John Updike

I'm super passionate about all five, and students tend to like at least a few (the Dahl and Bradbury most). 

However, of the five, the most recent was written in 1961 (Updike), and none have any racial or sexual diversity.  Table 9.1 of chapter 9 has three columns:  a literary element, the classical short story taught with it, and a young adult short story that also exhibits that element well. I think this is an awesome way to give students some choice while still teaching the literary elements. 

If I were to teach this unit again, I would probably give the young adult options next to the classic options and allow a choice.  Perhaps for each literary element, students could choose which text they wanted, so long as they chose at least two from the "classics" column.

Chapter 10 is over non-fiction, which is a personal favorite of mine.  I love learning new things through books, and I'm always pleasantly surprised by the amount of students who ask for non-fiction recommendations.  Cole gives some good questions for evaluating and selecting non-fiction, such as "is the author and authority in his/her field?" and "is there a clear distinction between fact and opinion?" 

I think these questions are important to teach students, especially in an age where any nonsense can be written on the internet and shared as fact. 

Sports non-fiction is another genre that is engaging to students, especially those who often say they don't enjoy reading.  When I ask a student what they are interested in and they respond "sports," I am thrilled to offer them a plethora of reading options. 

Cole ends the chapter with suggestions for teaching text structure and summarizing with non-fiction.  She includes charts and graphic organizers that could easily be replicated.  She states, "As English language arts teachers, we should include a fair amount of nonfiction in our curriculum, providing models for the kinds of writing we ask them to do and models for other kinds of real-world reading and writing" (509).