NoteBlog#2_Discussions

The readings all focused on discussions about literature, and making those discussions more valuable to our students.

The Langer article focused on the ways students interact with a text and the ways talking can help students understand a text better. A teacher can ask questions that guide students and draw on their "initial understandings, developing interpretations, and personal experience" and help the students to reflect and elaborate.

Relating to the Langer article, the McGee article talked about the ways teachers should reframe the ways we use and discuss literature in the class to embrace a more response driven, rather than right-answer driven style of teaching. Response driven talk means that a teacher should let the students take the wheel and form their own questions and answers about a text. It also means a teacher needs to be well prepared, have chosen a book that allows for such discussion, and can guide the conversation when needed. I think the role of the teacher is even more important when the discussions are response centered because a teacher needs to know just the right time to add to the conversation.

Almasi talks about the roles teachers and students should have in conversations about literature, and that to best help students understands, these roles must me more discussion based rather than based on recitation. She proposes that typically teachers think they are having a discussion with their students by actually are facilitating recitations. This make sense, as most of the discussions I have seen in the field have been more like recitations. It is very rare that when asked about how students feel about a story that it goes beyond liking or disliking.