Lit circles, turn and talks and fish bowls, oh my

I got to witness first hand the 9^th graders I observe dominating a lit circle. MY CT asked me to join one group talking about the book God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Although I’ve never read the book I was confident I’d be able to help facilitate the conversation and assist if there were any pauses. Oh my word, was I wrong! The girls got going and didn’t stop. They had such insightful things to say. They made great connections to their lives and pop culture references, fairy tales­­­- you name it. It astounded me the depth to which they engaged in this rather difficult book (for anyone unfamiliar with God of Small Things. it reminds me of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book taking place in India rather than Latin America). I took a vested interest in writing down their great responses but I rarely spoke because they were doing such a phenomenal job on their own I thought I would only slow them down!

It was really interesting to see this lit circle and relate it to the one I did last semester with my Reading II class. They were both the same in theory, the same roles and everything, but the conversations were drastically different. This firmly reminds me that every class is different and an activity that can work for one class can bomb in the next class causing cricket chirping and painful silences. When I was teaching in Thailand I would teach a lesson that rocked! I felt so confident I didn’t tweak it whatsoever for my next class although I knew it was a bit rowdier than the one before it. This was always a mistake. ALWAYS. The kids would start squirming in their seats and I would think What? Your friends in third period LOVED this; you should too! That’s a bad attitude to have and frankly, a little lazy on my part. I feel like I finally realized that one lesson plan doesn’t apply to every class but I definitely learned it the hard way...

Reading Peter Smagorinsky’s chapter on alternatives to teacher-led discussions were full of activities I could see working in one class I’ve observed but not the other and vice versa. The kiddos in my class from last semester would do a fantastic job with the body biography. I can picture them working in groups and really showing their creative sides a project like that. However, I shudder to think about implementing a fishbowl in that class. Even in the class I am in now, though, I feel like a fishbowl would be tricky to maneuver because the same four or five girls would dominate the conversation. It’s an activity that wouldn’t work well on either level.

I look forward to the day when I have my own classroom and I can really try a lot of these activities in-depth and when I have more time available than just one mini lesson or one class period. I am teaching tomorrow and after my last time teaching I’ve decided that I want to do more of a turn and talk activity. I want to make sure every girl’s voice is heard not just four or five. By having smaller groups and turn and talks more people get to speak. I grew up in classrooms with teacher-led discussions and I think I learned some really great things in that setting, but I think that a lot of students benefit from different discussion structures in the classroom. By sharing their opinions, experiences, and values the students form a community, a community that is comfortable with sharing and expressing themselves through discussions as well as writing.