Teaching Literature at Key Stage 3 and 4

Early Stages

Opening up the literature curriculum

In the early weeks of the course, it is useful to open up the question of what might count as literature and what might constitute a literature curriculum. The first part of this entails a series of interlocking debates – about canonicity, culture and heritage, about value, about media – and an explicitness about the active role of educators in participating in these debates. The second part poses the question of how we as tutors can promote among our student teachers an ongoing conversation about the choices that they are to make, the criteria by which they will make them and the impact that these choices will have on their pupils.

Activity: What is literature? Bring in as wide a variety of texts as you can lay your hands on – videos, novels, newspapers, magazines, comics, circulars, junk mail, posters, graffiti, logos, emails, CD covers (and so on). Ask the student teachers to consider these in relation to the question: which of these is literature (and why)?