The Pedagogical link between Fangirl TV and literature

 I have come to realise that I am developing a habit for choosing which literature to teach in class based on my favourite TV shows at the time.

With term 1, my Year 12 class studied Lord of the Flies, partly because it is a great book and everyone should read it but mostly because I am obsessed with Lost the TV show and it was an excuse for me to rant on about the 'links' between the show and the book. My new approach with teaching novels is to act as though every student will actually do the assigned readings and will read the book for themselves. This allows for fun games, extensive ranting on my part and cool social studies type activities like deciding the best form of social organisation for surviving on a tropical island or prisoners' dilemma type games. My approach last year was far less fun for me but probably more realistic - giving enough comprehension questions and notes on character, theme, setting etc that even the students who had not bothered to read the book could write essays on it that would probably pass.

This raises an interesting moral dilemma. If as an English teacher you suspect students will not bother to read an assigned book, should you give them notes to allow them to 'fake it' in an essay or just let them sink? Currently I personally think that lessons should be designed to enrich the understanding of those students who have read the book and the others can either read it or go buy the Cliff notes. However, when the mock exams roll around and the huge chunk of my class who didn't read the book start failing, I will probably panic and give them the lifeline notes. It is just sad. It is like we are condoning extreme laziness and it sometimes feels like you are teaching kids how to fake understanding by regurgitating other people's thoughts rather than actually think for themselves.

Has anyone ever had an English teacher who successfully got an entire class to read an assigned novel? If so, how?

Oh my, what a rather lengthy digression. To return to my original point, I have decided to teach Of Mice and Men to my Year 11 class this coming term. This is due in a large part to the excellent TV show Carnivale that started last Friday. It made me think about just how cool the 1930s depression America is as a setting. As an extra bonus I get to say "purdy" a lot when reading out from the text. "Your hair is purdy and soft just like 'em rabbits." Shudder.

It will be interesting to see how it goes down in my rugby head class. My year 11 class is really difficult, only 4 girls, the rest are boys which wouldn't be so bad except that they are rugby-head boys who think English is "gay" and are really rude. There are only 3 geeky kids who are intelligent and think that being told to read something is not a punishment or a violation of their human rights. It will be interesting to see if they connect with anything in the text what with the guns and rampant misogynism.