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Types of Literature That English

Teachers TeachPoetry

Sir Walter Scott, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats are all poets one willtypically find in high school literature textbooks. Textbooks for youngerchildren often include poems by Langston Hughes, Shel Silverstein andOgden Nash. Teachers expose students to many types of poetry--from shorthaiku to lengthy Old and Middle English ballads. Children learn about rhyme,meter, symbolism and many other poetic devices by studying the poetry andusing the poems they study as a stepping-off point to create their own poems.One of the most well-known poems students study in high school is the epicpoem The Iliad, accompanied by its counterpart The Odyssey.

Non-fiction Nonfiction is a major part of any English departments curriculum. Students

read examples of many different kinds of nonfiction. Autobiographies andbiographies are introduced in the early grades, with textbooks featuringbiographies of many of the authors that are studied. Autobiographicalstatements also accompany many of the selections. English teachers alsouse nonfiction to tie their curriculum into other core subjects, such as science,social studies and math. Students read selections that detail how to perform atask as well as stories of real-life adventures and historical events.

Drama English teachers begin to teach drama as early as kindergarten by helping

students learn to participate in short finger plays and choral readings. Playsget progressively longer and more complex as students advance through theprimary grades. By high school, students are reading plays, such asShakespeares Romeo and Juliet, Thornton Wilders Our Town andGeorge Bernard Shaws Pygmalion. Teachers emphasize sequence andplot in the primary grades and teach dramatic themes and characterdevelopment later on, including the historical background embedded in theplays.

Short Story It is doubtful that any high school students graduate without having read short

works by Ray Bradbury, Amy Tan and Edgar Allen Poe. Teachers commonlyselect the short stories they teach from literature anthologies in the form oftextbooks. These anthologies include short stories in numerous genres,including science fiction, fantasy, horror and realism. Teachers who teachearlier grades can choose from a variety of folk tales and excerpts fromlonger fiction selections, such as Laura Ingalls Wilders Little House on the

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Prairie, in addition to modern selections that may or may not have beenwritten expressly for the literature textbook.

Long Fiction

Long fiction does not begin to appear in English literature textbooks until

middle school. Teachers may find teaching long fiction difficult, due to studentabsences, schedule changes, standardized testing and other interruptionsthat may disrupt students study of the piece. Author Maya Angelou's story IKnow Why the Caged Bird Sings, appears in many high school anthologies,as does Henry David Thoreau's Walden.Teachers also teach Pearl S.Bucks, The Good Earth, William Goldings Lord of the Flies and JohnSteinbecks Of Mice and Men in many schools. The novels a teacherchooses to will depend on the grade she is teaching as well as whether or notthe class is an advanced placement course.