Dear Suzzane, Great question. There's a few ideas I love to stress to students: --I'm always emphasizing the difference between a literal and an implicit interpretation of a story or poem. The usual way to do this is to show students the parts of a story that are full/rich in meaning. I try to make a conversation develop around these meaningful parts of a story/poem and I tell them that writing well about a story/poem usually involves exploring these meaningful moments. --I also emphasize the relation to a part to the whole story or poem. The technical term for this is the hermeneutical circle (one of those big ideas I find valuable). The idea is that you want students to be thinking about the "big picture" as they read the text. I tell students to be always aware of patterns and how "pattern recognition" is one of the keys to reading. Usually the putting of a pattern together will allow for a new interpretation. --Finally, I always want my students to discover their own original interpretive argument for a story or poem. So as we have a conversation about the story or poem I want each student to come up with their own argument about what the story or poem means to them. Hope these ideas help! My best wishes, Dr. Michael Grafals

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