Response to Material #2

Now that we've got DIDLS under our belt it's exciting to be able to use them. Reading The American Dream, I'm able to take what once would have been a generally surreal and vague "feeling" about the play and turn it into a detailed analysis of how the author creates the effects that he does. Even if I don't really see the whole relationship at once, I can begin with the smaller blocks of DIDLS and build somewhat blindly and often find myself reaching conclusions I had already sort of "felt" but hadn't really been able to put my finger on. I'm looking forward to seeing what Holmes and the other kids can find with the same tools so that I can get a better sense of what I should be doing with them. It's also been really helpful to be able to work so closely with groups because writing is an area where I can get sometimes stuck in a one-track area and it's really helpful to bounce things off of people, particularly when theses are new techniques I'm using to analyze literature in an insightful way.