"I'm having a party tomorrow," Rabbit whispers to Owl. "It's a surprise." But Owl tell the news to Squirrel, he says, "Rabbit is hoeing the parsley tomorrow. It's a surprise." By the time word has spread to all of Rabbit's friends, it's anyone's guess just what it is that Rabbit will be doing tomorrow!

In this article, we inquire into ways that heteronormativity might be interrupted. Working from the premise that discussions of curriculum are not only sexualized, but heterosexualized, we argue that studies of sexuality must become intertwined with all questions of curricular relations. The writing is developed around two recent investigations: one that involved gay, lesbian, and transgendered teachers; and one that emerged from work with teachers, parents, and elementary school children. Through interpretations of specific responses to literary texts given by these adults and children, we seek to demonstrate how queer theory has paralleled and might be used to inform curriculum theory. In particular, we argue that curriculum has an obligation to interrupt heteronormative thinking—not only to promote social justice, but to broaden possibilities for perceiving, interpreting, and representing experience. We suggest that this obligation might be accomplished through the development of heterotopic fo...

The Surprise Party

Interrupting Heteronormativity: Toward a Queer Curriculum Theory

An interview with Crosby Bonsall: A writer for beginning readers

https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/childrens_literature_association_quarterly/v010/10.2.thompson.pdf

An Interview with Pat Hutchins

The primary purpose of this study is to find out the reading preference of students in an extensive reading (ER) programme conducted in a Malaysian Tamil primary school. The study also reports the children’s responses to the different types of post-reading activities in the reading sessions. The participants were 66 multilingual Tamil school students between 10-11 years old. They were involved in reading storybooks extensively in an after-school reading programme which examined the effects of ER and different post-reading activities on vocabulary learning. The qualitative data reported in this paper were analyzed from observations, video-recordings of interactions between student/teacher, reading reports, records from the library checkout cards, teacher feedback forms and vocabulary record sheets. Using thematic analysis techniques, the data from these various sources were categorised, and analysed. The findings of the study revealed that the students preferred to read 3 major genres of storybooks during the reading sessions; (a) adventure; (b) mystery; and (c) informational books. The results also show the reactions of the students towards the different types of word learning activities. Four patterns of responses were identified: (a) positive and negative feelings; (b) active participation; (c) preference for collaboration; and (d) motivation for reading.

/pdf/reading-preference-and-reactions-towards-different-types-of-1j1p4whbem.pdf

The Surprise Party

Citations

Interrupting Heteronormativity: Toward a Queer Curriculum Theory

An interview with Crosby Bonsall: A writer for beginning readers

An Interview with Pat Hutchins

Reading preference and reactions towards different types of post-reading activities among tamil primary school students