Instructor Resources

<body>  <a href="#lastcrumb" title="Skip Breadcrumb Navigation" onfocus="expandMenu('breadskip');" onblur="hideSkip('breadskip');" ><img src="/wps/media/styles/1480/_skins_/D/default_vanilla/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1" alt="Skip Breadcrumb Navigation" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0"></a><div class="submenu" id="breadskip"><span class="breadcrumbs">[Skip Breadcrumb Navigation]</span><noscript>: <a href="#lastcrumb"><span class="breadcrumbs">[Skip Breadcrumb Navigation]</span></a></noscript><br> </div> <table border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0"> <tr align="left" valign="top">  <td align="left" valign="top"><a href="/ab_donelson_litfortoday_7/23/5921/1515838.cw/index.html" target="_top" class="breadcrumbs" >Home</a></td>  <td align="left" valign="middle"> <img src="/wps/media/styles/1480/_skins_/D/default_vanilla/breadcrumb_arrow.gif" alt=" arrow " width="21" height="9" hspace="0" vspace="2" border="0"> </td>  <td align="left" valign="top"><span class="breadcrumbs"><a name="lastcrumb" id="lastcrumb">Instructor Resources</a></span></td> </tr> </table> <p /> <span class="breadcrumbs">No Frames Version</span><br> <span class="homepageTitle">Instructor Resources</span><p /> <P><FONT SIZE="4"><B>Welcome to the Instructor's Web Site for Literature for Today's Young Adults, 7th edition </B></FONT><br><br><b>Compiled by Alleen Pace Nilsen</b> <A HREF="mailto:alleen.nilsen@asu.edu" >alleen.nilsen@asu.edu</A> <div> <P>First, thanks for choosing our textbook. I know how busy you are and so I will share only things which I hope you will be able to download and change to fit your own teaching whether on-line or in a classroom. I will start with a sample syllabus based on the last semester I taught the course but adapted to the new edition. I am including copies of worksheets that I sometimes take into class as a way of facilitating cooperative learning. <P>Suggestions for activities are also given on the student web site. Take a look to see if there are ways that you want to coordinate your assignments with those suggestions. You may also want to change the order of the chapters in which you approach the text. Because Ken and I have done most of our teaching in an English Department, we start with a discussion of the literature itself. However people who teach in Schools of Library Science or in Colleges of Education have told us that they prefer to start with Chapters 10 or 11 because these chapters give students a background for understanding what they need to know about contemporary books written for young adults. <P>Because I am fortunate enough to receive sample copies of books from publishers, I usually take a book cart loaded with books to class. Colleagues tease me that I look like the prison librarian in the 1994 film Shawshank Redemption. Nevertheless, I keep pushing my book cart because it is my security blanket. If I can't think of anything to say, I can always distribute the books and let students read and make their own observations. <P>Students will need books for some of the in-class worksheets listed below. Two students can easily "read" the same book; in fact, they often learn more if they are checking their reactions against those of a partner. This means that for most of the work shop activities, you can get by with only half as many books as you have students. If you do not own enough of the appropriate books, you can ask students to bring in whatever book they read for the particular section you are working with. You can also check out books from libraries, but I learned long ago not to loan library books to students. <P>On the reading lists, I give priority to books published specifically for young adults. I know that teenagers read many books published for general adult audiences, and I do not want to discourage this practice. However, as I explain to students, this is probably the only class they will ever take in young adult literature and so I want them to focus on contemporary books published for young adults. Before I came up with this rationale, I found our students, who are mostly English majors, listing whatever books they happened to be reading for their other classes and then arguing that they knew teenagers who "loved" these books. When we read short stories or an occasional book published for adults, I use it to help students understand how books published for adults differ from those published for teenagers and what extra responsibilities they might have in leading students through what are usually more complex books. <P>Another practice that you might question is why we have our students turn in a reading list from which we select books to ask about on the midterm and the final exam. We know that it's more customary to ask students to make reading cards or to keep computerized records of their reading. We encourage students to do this (see pages 287-289) for their own benefit, but not for ours. After a few semesters of reading piles and piles of student-written cards, I was ready to acquiesce to students who pointed out that I advised them not "punish" kids by making them write a report for every book they read, and yet that was exactly what I was doing. <P>If you have ideas, questions or comments, you are welcome to send me an e-mail <A HREF="mailto:alleen.nilsen@asu.edu" >alleen.nilsen@asu.edu</A>. My plan is to update the web site each April when we will have the new Honor List put together. It would be fun at that time to also add ideas and comments from those of you who are teaching the course. Lastly, I want to express my thanks to Elizabeth Wahlquist, who for many years used our textbook and wrote the Instructor's Manual. I have adapted some of her good ideas into both this site and the Student Web Site. </div> <br> <p /> <ul> <li> <a href="/ab_donelson_litfortoday_7/23/5921/1515911.cw/sitenav/index.html">Site Navigation</a><br /> <li> <a href="/ab_donelson_litfortoday_7/23/5921/1515911.cw/leftnav/index.html">Navigation for Instructor Resources</a> <ul> </body>