Recasting the Text: Inquiry-Based Activities for Comprehending and Composing

The main premise of the book is that students can use "seven angles of vision" in responding to a text and thus can "recast" the text, as readers, writers, and partners in a classroom dedicated to literature. The seven angles include "initial responses, story threads, shifting perspectives, connecting with the writer, language and craft, recasting the text," and finally, "You, the Text, the World." Students apply a variety of different techniques, including double-entry logs, creative responses, and collaborative activities in each of these angles. As a classroom teacher, I found the book very useful. Some of the activities and exercises within can be lifted wholesale as practice tryouts if teachers would like to test the theories in their own classrooms, but also, the book can serve as a model for developing a year-long curriculum that encourages teachers and students to think about texts in innovative and creative ways. While the book's examples include mainly essays, short fiction and poetry, there is also a section on performance, and the examples should be easily adaptable to longer works of fiction or nonfiction. The bulk of the book is made up of examples and activities, not theoretical passages, and can be put into ease pretty readily in any lit teacher's practice.