“Literary Immersion”
“Mrs. Steele, I think this is my favorite book of all time.”
I love hearing that phrase. We finished Jane of Lantern Hill in third grade this week, and many of them have said this to me since then. I’ve noticed that my students often have a delightfully passionate response to the books we read in class, which has a lot to do with the excellence of the books themselves. But, in the case of a transfer student who decides to go back and read some of the previous year’s literature books for fun, they rarely have a the same ardent reaction… So book choice doesn’t explain all of it. I have come to describe this exuberant, joyful reaction to literature as being a result of literary immersion: complete preoccupation and delight in a novel.
In my classes, we become preoccupied with our novels by spending a long time reading a single book, agonizing over its myriad beautiful details, and experiencing its conflicts together. This combination results in “literary immersion,” which gives way naturally to an enthusiastic love of literature.
On average, each of my classes reads between seven and eight novels per year. We spend roughly a month reading each title, give or take a week for extra-long or super-short works. The students are not allowed to read ahead of the rest of the class, and they are assigned about a chapter of reading each night. This slow and steady pace allows for us to luxuriate in the story and get really familiar with its setting and all of our characters, until we all feel like the people we are reading about are our friends, and the place where they live is just around the corner. We live and breathe the book’s atmosphere for long enough that even the least motivated student stands no chance when trying to resist engagement. This gives us the chance to soak in every beautiful detail of the author’s creation.
My lesson plans revolve around those beautiful details. Each day, the students engage in lively discussion of the various important aspects of their reading. I guide them through the novel by asking careful questions, demanding commitment to the text on the page, and highlighting what I personally love about our books. They listen, they ask questions, they take notes, and they write. Oh boy, do they write. Because we take our time going through our books, we have the wonderful opportunity to dive into, not only what makes the work important, but how to express that importance in their own words, giving voice to the growing love of literature inside of them.
The last aspect of literary immersion is the most fun, and perhaps the most important: we enter the story together, we experience its most dramatic events together, and we leave the story together. I read aloud to them at the beginning and end of the novels, and at the parts where I can’t stand to miss their reactions—the most pivotal, dramatic moments. This community experience seals the deal of literary immersion. Not only do we take our time, luxuriate and appreciate, but we also get to experience the most impactful moments of the story all together, in an environment tailored to the love of stories. The students feed off of one another’s excitement, which causes that excitement to build and build until it reaches a fever pitch of enthusiasm for the story which makes the experience all the more memorable and special.
With each new book I begin with my classes, it is my goal to achieve literary immersion. I want my students so immersed in the story that they shiver with cold while reading The Long Winter, that they laugh with tears in their eyes when finishing Jane of Lantern Hill, and that they gasp in horror when Madame de Villefort commits her last murder in The Count of Monte Cristo.
My dearest hope and ambition is that, through literary immersion, my students will build up a store of experiences that fills them with the joy literature can bring to one’s life. Then, they can go into the world armed with the values imparted to them by the books we have read together, and also with the desire to read more, mining the world’s literature for more of the infinite value it has to offer.