I’m trying something a bit different in senior English today. As I started writing some questions on the board for them to answer, one of my students said, “We have to discuss this reading before we get assessed on it. I didn’t understand it at all.”
The reading in question was one of Toni Morrison’s essays (25 pages, more or less, split into two nights’ reading). I asked them to answer three questions in writing:
- Did you like the essay? Why? (what I call “the book club” question)
- What is the main point of the essay? (Have at least three supporting quotes for your answer)
- Do you agree with what you stated was the main point? Why?
I pointed out that the subject of the essay is complex enough that there are multiple plausible answers to the “main point” question. I reminded them that you could understand what you claimed Morrison was asserting in the essay without necessarily agreeing with her point.
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What’s different is not combining a writing with discussion, but in giving the students ten minutes after I put the questions on the board to discuss possible responses among themselves if they wanted to do so. I didn’t assign groups nor make the discussion mandatory–they could start writing immediately if they wanted to do so. Interestingly, the discussions were at least 90% on topic.
Their writing was to be individual–the point of the discussion was to help them clarify their understanding rather than to reach a group consensus on answers.
When asked if the writing was going to be graded, I gave my standard snarky response: “only if you do poorly on it.” Had I been pressed, I would have said, “Only if you don’t take it seriously,” which is a more appropriate response. I give the snarky response because I don’t appreciate the implications of such questions, which seem to me to be that “I’ll only bother to give a thoughtful response if it’s going to count.”