Critical Encounters in Secondary English: Teaching Literacy Theory to Adolescents

Because of the emphasis placed on nonfiction and informational texts by the Common Core State Standards, literature teachers all over the country are re-evaluating their curriculum and looking for thoughtful ways to incorporate nonfiction into their courses. They are also rethinking their pedagogy as they consider ways to approach texts that are outside the usual fare of secondary literature classrooms. The Third Edition of Critical Encounters in Secondary English provides an integrated approach to incorporating nonfiction and informational texts into the literature classroom. Grounded in solid theory with new field-tested classroom activities, this new edition shows teachers how to adapt practices that have always defined good pedagogy to the new generation of standards for literature instruction.
New for the Third Edition: A preface and introduction that discusses the CCSS and their implications for literature instruction. Lists of nonfiction texts at the end of each chapter related to the critical lens described in that chapter. A chapter on new historicism for interpreting nonfiction and informational sources. Classroom activities created specifically for use with nonfiction texts. Additional activities that demonstrate how informational texts can be used in conjunction with traditional literary texts.
Praise for Critical Encounters in Secondary English!
“All the undergraduate students cited (Appleman’s book) as their favorite piece of work for the semester, and the one that was most successful during student teaching.”
―English Journal
“This book provides powerful ways to get young people thinking about literature and about how it relates to their lives.”
―Rethinking Schools
“Compelling.”
―Teacher Magazine
“Interesting and provocative”
―Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy
“Many teachers have difficulty engaging students in critical analyses of literature because teachers themselves do not know how to use strategies to ease their students into this higher-order thinking process. Appleman’s text helps teachers understand how and why, ‘now perhaps more than ever before, students need critical tools to read the increasingly bewildering and text-filled world that surrounds them,’ and provides detailed strategies to guide students’ review of literature.”
―Voice of Youth Advocate
“What a smart and useful book! It provides teachers with a wealth of knowledge and material to help their students develop critical perspective and suppleness of thought.”
―Mike Rose, University of California, Los Angeles

“This Third Edition proves that Appleman still has her hand on the pulse of the rapidly changing landscape of education.”
―Ernest Morrell, Teachers College, Columbia University

“This new edition of Deborah Appleman’s now classic book demonstrates even more dramatically than previously how the critical theories she so skillfully teaches serve not only as lenses for the reading of literature, but as tools for discovering, interrogating, and challenging injustice, hypocrisy, and the hidden power relations that students are likely to encounter.”
―Sheridan Blau, program coordinator, English education, Teachers College, Columbia University