Thursday, September 20, 2007

Discussion on Discussions

My students have been reading and discussing A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest Gaines this past week. As we have been going through this process I have tried to be mindful that one of my goals is to help prepare the students for book clubs, which also helps move us toward my ultimate goal which to to prepare the students to discuss literature in any context without the direction/guidance of a teacher.

With this end in mind, I have been asking the students to participate in a variety of discussion styles--Socratic Seminars, teacher led discussions, student led discussions, small group discussions, etc. I have also come right out and asked the students to think about our discussions and to evaluate them. We talked about what needs to be improved in each class; they have been amazingly insightful.

The other twist I have put on all of this is that I am keeping track (on some days) of how often students participate. This has allowed me to make sure I get those quieter, or all together silent, voices in the room and it has also given me a concrete record of which students are dominating the conversation. My hope is the use this information when I place students in their book clubs. I'd like to not only remain mindful of friendships in the class, but discussion styles in the hope of forming balanced book clubs. We'll have to see how this goes.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you're on your way. Tracking student input is a great idea, especially in light of organizing the book discussion groups. I'm always amazed as the astute comments by student when asked to give feedback on processes in the classroom. Sometimes I know I have underestimated their insight.

Cindy O-A said...

Great idea, Rebecca! That will definitely add another twist to the make-up of book clubs. I'll be eager to see our observations and how they play out.