Lorraine McDonald
The print version of this publication is no longer available. It has been replaced by the 3rd edition of this publication.
The enriched revision and update of Lorraine McDonald's best selling title includes up-to-date Australian Curriculum links and coverage along with new research, a new chapter on evaluating literary texts, and much more. Nonfiction texts have been added as examples of quality mentor texts, along with updated examples where appropriate of narratives and picture books.
"Literature has always been used as reading material in Australian schools and teachers are the interpretive authorities on literary texts; the meaning of text is filtered through the way they talk about it."(p.3)
A Literature Companion for Teachers - 2nd edition continues to provide teachers with the appropriate knowledge for this important role. It is both a revision and an update and remains true to its purpose: a key reference to enhance practising and pre-service teachers’ knowledge about how literature may be responded to, examined, interpreted, analysed, evaluated and created. It presents literary writing as both an ‘art’ and a ‘craft’ and explores aspects of the ‘craft’ of writers’ ‘artistry’. Each chapter presents exemplars of quality literature, with many recent texts included in this edition.
With the 2016 Australian Curriculum: English v.8.3 as a starting point the book offers explanations, interpretations and examples for each of the four Literature strands. The quality literature texts and excerpts within serve as possible mentor texts for teachers. Each chapter offers models for teaching the literary content, and attention to learning literacy is integrated via a range of teaching opportunities. These experiences emphasise co-operative book talk, close reading to seek evidence from the text and creative application of new learning to consolidate knowledge.
Throughout the book there is a consistent focus on how language constructs meanings in texts. This emphasis is now foregrounded as an explicit concept across the Key Ideas introduced in the curriculum. Throughout the book the teaching sequence of identify, describe and explain is promoted. This is intended to ensure students move beyond codebreaking and literal level comprehension to deeper interpretation and analysis
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This edition:
Chapter 10: Evaluating Literary Texts has been added in response to the Australian Curriculum: English Substrands of Evaluative language, Expressing preferences and evaluating texts, and from Year 6, Analysing and evaluating texts.
Has a clear structure divided across three parts:
Part One: The art and craft of literary texts; Part Two: Creating literary texts; Part Three: Expanding literary knowledge
Presents comprehensive criteria tables and models guided reading discussions.
Includes chapters on poetry, picture books and a new revised chapter on digital narratives.
For this edition quality literary non-fiction texts have been included
The role of each General Capability when teaching literary texts is discussed
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