Product+or+Performance

What product or performance will demonstrate this knowledge and ability? How is this related to your principled approach?
Writing and discussion are key elements of the demonstration of the knowledge and abilities learned under this philosophy. Under the umbrella of writing and discussion, various products and performances create the connections necessary for transactional experiences.

__Frontloading (the evocative dimension)__ 1. Gateway Activities, or Frontloading, evoke students’ lives in ways that will make their reading come alive since the reading objective is to move students from chronological time to story time; they make the transition easier. It is very difficult to rehabilitate a reading that has died or become very difficult for a reader, so it is wise to frontload activities, discussions, and experiences that will engage students’ interests enough to ease their transition into the third space. There needs to be a correlation or resonance between the world of the reader and the world of the text or the text will provide no meaning for the reader (80). When students bring in their own ideas or creations related to the context and themes of a text, it helps students build their own reservoir of knowledge that they can draw from when entering the world of a text.
 * 1) Students bring in their own interests
 * 2) Teachers can connect students’ interest to future texts even if they aren’t relevant to anything immediate. The key is for students to invest in a world framed around their experiences in the classroom.
 * 3) Use pop culture as a connection between reader and text
 * 4) Music
 * 5) Film
 * 6) Television
 * 7) Video Games
 * 8) Sports
 * 9) Scenario-based activities that put students in a hypothetical world

2. Focus first on the fun of reading: schools often take fun out of reading by focusing exclusively on the skills and strategies of “effective readers,” instead of focusing on creating the immersive second worlds of texts. Those secondary worlds are imperative for the greater understandings of a text because they immerse readers in the third spaces that allows for transaction. The fun of reading should come first, followed by the academic details. This prioritization enjoyment in the process allows students to read “with” a text as opposed to reading “against” a text. “Skills, strategies, and concepts must be taught in the context of existential inquiry and in service of deepened personal understandings, not as an end in themselves but as a means to deepening understanding and new use (85). Doing this facilitates immersion, and textual immersion is necessary for transaction.

__Developing a relationship with authors and others (the connective dimension)__ Developing and understanding relationships with characters and authors teaches students about relationships in general: we learn to care about others than ourselves by sharing life with them for a little while (95-96). The following are activities or processes that often lead to the development of relationships between students and authors. The point is that we should attempt to draw lines between authors and our students in order to build relationships. Connecting with authors allows us to better connect with their ideas about something large forces embedded in our cultures and society.

1. Re-creation exercises: Take information from a text and using it as the foundation or inspiration for the creation of a new student-created text. Bond form between the original and new author when new authors infer meanings from the original text and then create their own. Upon the creation of new texts, a relationship forms between the authors, connecting new an old in a new chain of being. The text serves as a transactional space that connects everyone through a universal foundation.

2. Seeing authors in popular culture: It is important for students to connect with authors and characters they personally invest in and identify with. The process facilitates and encourages the transactional world building that is important for connecting students.
 * 1) Students keep lists of their favorite texts, books, movies, genres, and authors
 * 2) Students bring in clips or sections of text for a favorite character
 * 3) Students answer questions about characters:
 * 4) Why are they attracted to their chosen character
 * 5) What can be learned from the character
 * 6) What should we emulate and admire about the character
 * 7) What should we not emulate and admire?
 * 8) How is this character like us?
 * 9) How is the character not like us?
 * 10) How does the author present this character?

3. Author’s chair: a special chair in the classroom where students are allowed to sit in at any time to share their writing. The author’s chair connects students with authors on a personal level, as it is often impossible to have published authors visit the classroom. Students are able to model a sought-after relationship with the text on a personal level. 4. Students offer alternate endings for texts (for student and class texts) and alternative, “what-if” scenarios based on the text
 * Suggestions: have classmates introduce readers as authors, allow no interruptions, applaud after reading, and allow the audience to respond (students can say what they took away from reading and offer praise and suggestions)
 * By rewriting ending or responding to hypothetical scenarios and prompts drawn from the world of a text, students are able to add to and further their relationship and understanding of texts, especially from the author’s perspective, which goes on to humanize the creative force of the transactional third spaces we hope students occupy.

5. Students can fill in story gaps, imagine new situations, characters, settings, events, or compose sequels or parodies
 * See above

6. Save the last word: Each student (or group) chooses a favorite quote or excerpt, shares it with the class, and then waits to see what their classmates say about the excerpt before describing why she chose it.

7. Literature Circles: Teacher assign an author spokesman to stand in and answer questions as the author.

8. Rules of Notice Think-Alouds: Students think aloud during reading about what they think the author wants them to notice. Students then ask why the author wanted them to notice certain details and how we interpret these cues.

9. Questioning: Individually or as a class, students question the author’s strategies by following the line of questioning above in the “Rules of Notice Think-Alouds,” only the process does not happen while students are reading

10. Scenario-based writing assignments that put the author in a different context: For example, students write to the author as he is now running an advice column

11. Correspondence Dramas: Similar to the example above, students write letters, notes, questions, or advice requests to authors. Students can exchange these letters and then respond in the role of the authors, justifying their answers, or responses can be performed in a dramatic form

12. Hotseating the author: someone (teacher, student, multiple students) takes on the role of the author and answers questions fielded by the students and/or teacher. This can take many variations depending on what the teacher wants to accomplish

13. To Tell the Truth: A variation of hotseating the author where three or four students take on the role of the author. Students ask questions and then vote to determine which student performs as the most realistic author. Non-performing students must justify their votes with evidence from the performing students’ responses.

14. Authorial reading: This type of reading requires readers to read and interpret cues exactly as the author intended. This supports transactional empathy. How did the author expect her audience to understand the text based on the decisions she made as an author? Ideally, by learning to take on someone else’s persona and decision making process, we learn to see beyond ourselves and to become better, more insightful versions of ourselves

__Rituals for reflection (the reflective dimension)__

The final desired outcome after attempting to engage and connect students is a demonstration of their knowledge, abilities, and understandings through individual and collective reflections, the final step of the transactional process and the beginning of shaping the future as a truly democratic world.

As a teacher, the goal is to turn school into work that matters to the world. Offer opportunities for discoveries, renewals, and reflections through small and large projects. Even if the text appears hopeless (like //1984//), assigned opportunities for reflection must ask students to reflect through a lens of hope: why is life hopeful and how can we improve? The reflections must ask students to think about quests that are relevant to their lives and the world. We cannot force students to reflect, but we can create situations that invite, encourage, and nurture reflective responsiveness (132).

1. Ask students to write after everything they read, answering the following two questions that relate to authorial and responsive reading (132-133):
 * 1) How do you think the author was trying to change how people think and feel by what he or she wrote?
 * 2) How was your own thinking and feeling reinforced, challenged, or chaged, in small or large ways, by what you read
 * 3) The variety of formats these questions can take is addressed below

2. Ask the preceding questions as shaped by the students and their needs: Not every unit has to conclude with a formal essay; assignments shaped according to students’ practical and personal needs as motivated by essential issues and questions, society, and the world at large are acceptable and encouraged. For example, these models previously listed under Process and Methodology are acceptable:
 * 1) As a member of the Party, write a proposal letter for a potentially successful propaganda campaign if The Party were to take power in 2012
 * 2) On the other side of the coin, develop a campaign of steps that could be taken to avoid The Party’s ascension in 2012
 * 3) Write a journal for O’Brien explaining his time before becoming a Party member and his transition (forced or voluntary) into becoming a member of the Inner-Party
 * 4) Other examples include parody, reinterpretation, changing perspectives, changing genres, cultural adaptations, etc.
 * 5) The goal is creative reflections in response to the issues, questions, and world of the text, especially if the reflection is in the form of an artistic or practical life application

3. Retrospective and prospective autobiographies (in narrative, dramatic, or essay form): The key here is for students to produce autobiographies that trace the real past into an imagined future. If students are asked to predict their future, they may respond aimlessly without considering the past. However, since the past accounts for the future, students are forced to //reflect// if their lives are considered as a whole. This type of reflection is similar to the reflections inspired by the text and its issues. The autobiography can take a variety of formats through a variety of methods of execution, as long as students understand and reflect on the past’s function for the future. Considering //1984// and the party slogan “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past,” a transition exists between history, personal histories, and their connection to the future.

4. Transactional dialogue about literature (classroom book group): Transactional discussions about literature and the application of life lessons learned from literature are essential for the transactional process. Discussions most closely resemble the interactions //all// students will participate in outside of the classroom. The ability to interpret, respond to, and respect another’s opinion and history is vital to living with the wisdom and love achieved through transaction. Wilhelm models this idea of transactional dialogue on the book group. In order to facilitate this demonstration of knowledge and ability in the classroom, we have to practice all off the transactional steps: “...students should be encouraged and assisted to create a personally meaningful and compelling response to the text,…and the classroom needs to become a dialogic space where students’ thinking is encouraged, assisted, and privileged” (140). In a sense, transactional dialogue is the ultimate demonstration of knowledge and ability under the philosophy of transactional living.