- Students are encouraged to offer their unique perspectives,
share interpretations, and raise questions in classrooms
that support discussions.
- Discussion provides students with opportunities to explore
the layers of possibility individuals bring to each reading,
including unique experiences in their lives and differing
perspectives based on the books they have read.
- Classrooms that support students' developing understandings
provide a safe learning community where students feel free
to share their range of ideas. They feel respected and learn
to respect and trust others in the community.
- Writing is an important rehearsal for fruitful classroom
- Students are treated as life-long learners in classrooms
that support discussion.
- Teachers can encourage discussion by:
- Providing engaging texts, such as literature that
features adolescents and their dilemmas.
- Asking questions that help students tap prior knowledge
and life experiences.
- Choosing a compelling passage and reading it aloud.
- Being a good listener to students' ideas.
- Setting discussion guidelines in concert with student
- Modeling ways to connect to the literature. For instance,
share personal experiences that the text makes you recall
or similar situations you have encountered in your life.
- Using think alouds to demonstrate the ways you are
interacting with the literature as you read.
- Modeling writing as a way to collect your own ideas
about a text.
- Inviting students to create their own questions about
- Removing yourself as the point from which all conversation
- Successful discussions do not occur without careful strategic
planning. In planning for discussion:
- Consider ways to help students find their way into
the text. This is crucial in getting a conversation
- Consider ways you can model thinking, writing, and
connecting the text to your own life.
- Physically arrange your classroom so that it best
supports discussion. This may be small groups, pairs,
teams, or rows facing one another. Rely on your knowledge
of your students, their energy level, their experience
with discussion, and your goals for the discussion.
It may be necessary to change the configurations often
for optimum success.
- Know that all groups will not be successful. When
this happens, sometimes it is best to allow the group
to break off into smaller groups or to allow students
to work independently and join the class later in a
- Think about which students in your class are more
likely to contribute to discussion and which ones are
more reluctant. Plan for including all students in the
literary discussion. This might include your listening
to a group's discussion and directing the conversation
towards the quieter students or creating heterogeneous
groups with many personalities and temperaments.
- Consider ways to respond to the literature, other
than discussion, such as the use of art and writing.
These opportunities will include some of the quieter
- Think about ways you can encourage students to pose
their own questions.
- Discussion creates a classroom environment where students
focus less on recitation and memorization and more on substantial
inquiry and analysis.
- Questions are a natural part of the literary experience
and students are invited to raise thought-provoking questions
in a literary community. Questions are never viewed as not
knowing or not fully understanding, as in a traditional
- Literary concepts are learned in context, as students
use this literary lexicon as the fabric of their discussions,
developing their understandings and growing their interpretations.
Teachers can provide opportunities for literary concept
- Asking questions that foreground literary elements
in a text.
- Modeling the use of literary language in questions
and contributions to discussions.
- Planning natural connections in the text. If a text
lends itself well to "foreshadowing," for
instance, find ways to bring this to your students'
attention and allow them to take the conversation further.
This may include the use of picture books, read alouds,