"It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it."
-Joseph Joubert
Classroom discussion on literature is necessary to properly achieve understanding of a given text. While a reader brings an incredibly vast collection of personal thoughts and experiences to every text they read, they are only armed with their own ideas. The introduction of opposing or even similar viewpoints will help them question and strengthen their own thoughts an interpretations. How though do we as teachers engage lively discussion that involves and engages every student in the class?
I personally take my cues from Jeffrey Welhelm and his text Engaging Readers and Writers with Inquiry. In the text, Wilhelm describes the idea of "Essential Questions": large far-reaching inquiries that relate themes and events in a text to both student readers and the outside world. With the use of these questions, it is possible to quickly stimulate discussion that can then be shifted into the reading of a text. For example, when working with Romeo and Juliet, a teacher may ask something along the lines of, "How does love change the ways in which people act?" These questions are enticing to high school audiences, and make discussions an easier process than one would assume.
It is important however to keep the discussions on topic. Conversations with twenty-or-so participants will naturally ebb and flow along the array of topics present during the discussion of literature, but there comes a point where the teacher needs to interject and bring it back to its origins. A good way to do this is to respond to what is being said with a question relating back to the initial talking point. It is difficult to give an example of this given the nearly infinite possible scenarios in which the need for re-framing should arise, but it is something that should be available as a tool at all times.
I personally take my cues from Jeffrey Welhelm and his text Engaging Readers and Writers with Inquiry. In the text, Wilhelm describes the idea of "Essential Questions": large far-reaching inquiries that relate themes and events in a text to both student readers and the outside world. With the use of these questions, it is possible to quickly stimulate discussion that can then be shifted into the reading of a text. For example, when working with Romeo and Juliet, a teacher may ask something along the lines of, "How does love change the ways in which people act?" These questions are enticing to high school audiences, and make discussions an easier process than one would assume.
It is important however to keep the discussions on topic. Conversations with twenty-or-so participants will naturally ebb and flow along the array of topics present during the discussion of literature, but there comes a point where the teacher needs to interject and bring it back to its origins. A good way to do this is to respond to what is being said with a question relating back to the initial talking point. It is difficult to give an example of this given the nearly infinite possible scenarios in which the need for re-framing should arise, but it is something that should be available as a tool at all times.