Conversations About Literature

Immediately upon beginning this reading, I was reminded of the short story we read in class called "Death in the Afternoon."  I thought about how many layers of meaning were revealed through the various interpretations of the text around the classroom.  I thought instantly of hearing how others picked up on details that I had missed that completely shifted my perspective on the text.  Conversation around stories is natural.  We seek out guidance when interpreting events in our lives, and making the extension to texts we read seems like a logical next step.  However, students need time to engage in meaningful talk, investigate layers of meaning, and develop strong conversation skills surrounding texts.

One of the biggest takeaway from this week's texts was from the Socratic Seminars video.  Teachers cringe at the thought of a silent classroom when students are being asked to share their thoughts.  I felt my own heartbeat increase watching the video as the teacher handed the students the floor and the sound of crickets grew in my mind.  I can't say that were I the teacher in that instance, I wouldn't have started to ask questions to get the conversation flowing.  However, the teacher, Paige Price, was wise and stated that you have to remove yourself from the center and let students struggle.  I find myself challenged the most by this idea, even as evidenced by the lesson I taught last week, because I imagine the discomfort of the students.  I remember vividly sitting in class trying to think and drawing blank.  However, when I was in school, teachers often rushed in to add supports instead of letting kids work through the struggle.  It's so hard because you know that the right move is to lay back and let students do the heavy lifting.  Still, retraining your brain allow the dead air is a real challenge that I know I will personally have to work through as a teacher.

I also really loved the reading's thinking skills for language conversation (evaluating importance, taking multiple perspectives, interpreting, and persuading), because I feel they drive at the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.  Having the list of questions to help push students toward using these thinking skills is also a huge help for teachers.  I think it can sometimes be difficult to think of a general list of questions, because we often get bogged down in the specifics of a text.  However, there's a huge benefit to having students questioning literature in ways that are applicable to many texts, as long as these questions really drive at deeper meaning in text.  Having a list of general questions helps students walk away with a set of conversation skills as opposed to just textually specific knowledge.