So, I invented something last week. Something new, something innovative, something no one else has ever tried before.
How do I know it's never been tried before?
Because I searched for it on Pinterest and nothing existed, so clearly, it's never been done before!
What IS this incredible new invention?
Twice Baked Pie.
They make twice baked potatoes, and twice baked fries, so why not twice baked pie??!
Many, many reasons why not twice baked pie.....
In my head, twice baked pie was going to be a genius way to use my slightly too soupy Bumbleberry Crumble-Thing that I had frozen so it wouldn't spoil while we were on vacation. In my head, this twice baked pie would be superior to ALL pies because it would have TWICE the crust, some of it even INSIDE the gooey center of the pie, acting like little surprise crunch bombs in your mouth as you ate it. In my head, this all made perfect sense, so I went along with my half-baked plan for twice baked pie. I threw together a crust (the no-roll kind from my Grandma Fluegel, because who has the time or counter space to roll pie crust?), mixed up the old (now thawed) pie, tossed it in the shell, slid it into the oven, and waited for this genius invention to come to fruition.
...Let's just say that you won't be seeing my recipe for Twice Baked Bumbleberry Pie on Pinterest any time soon.
Earlier this spring, I was pretty sure that I'd invented something else new, something innovative, something no one else had ever tried before.
I called it.....
Discussion Based Reading Class!!! (cue Medieval Fanfare...)
Discussion Based Reading Class was developed on the same idea that the rest of reading class was centered around: We do whatever makes Mrs. Yeagle happy (right 2015-16 6th graders??), and what makes Mrs. Yeagle happy is when we get to talk about what we are reading instead of having a giant group read-aloud time where no one pays attention.
Don't get me wrong, I used to teach reading that way - we'd all find comfy places around the room (or sit in our desks if Mean Mrs. Yeagle was there that day...), pull out our novels, and read 5-10 pages together, sometimes playing popcorn, sometimes reading entire pages before passing the read-aloud baton, and sometimes the class would just sit and listen while I amazed them with my theatrical read aloud skills. This was all well and good, and I justified it that the kids DID need to work on their fluency.....but I was never quite satisfied with it for several reasons...
It did no justice for my advanced reading kids who were forced to sit and follow along as their slower-reading peers stumbled through a novel that was maybe just a reading level a touch too high.
It did no justice for my struggling readers who probably spent the class living in fear that their friend may call on them to read and they'd have to stumble over pronouncing "Hermione Granger" one more time.
It certainly did no justice for my desire to teach the kids deeper thinking skills - how could I foster deep conversation about the book when we were barely getting the book read?!
And it definitely did no justice for my daily teaching which was minimal if I wanted to actually finish the novel. Simply put, reading a novel aloud in class left ZERO time for discussion about what made the novel great: themes, style, word choice, plot points.... We were doing good just to read 10 pages in class and complete the novel before we all forgot chapter 1.
And then it happened.
We were running short on time, as we always were because we spent all of our spare class time plugging through the novel, and in a moment of craziness, I assigned the students to read the last two chapters of The Lightning Thief on their own as homework. It was a wild, dangerous assignment, and I knew that only half the kids would actually finish, but I had to take the risk because, darn it, we were going to finish this book before spring break if it killed us! The kids returned to class the next day, some of them armed with the ending of the book, some of them armed with the ending of the movie (which of course is nothing like the book), and some of them armed with....well, nothing, because they'd watched YouTube all night instead of reading the book.
But as we sat down together and I began the class with, "So, how about that ending?!" and a handful of students' eyes got wide and they all started excitedly talking about the betrayal of the main character, I knew that the wild act of assigning the reading had been a good one. Heads were turning as the non-readers listened to the readers explain what had happened and soon a handful of them had snuck their books under their desks and were trying to read the last two chapters they'd skipped.
That day we talked about themes of the novel, plot twists, tone and mood. We reviewed connotation and denotation and looked for foreshadowing that should have tipped us off about who the betrayal was coming from. We considered the name of the kids sword and why Rick Riordan may have chosen that name - what IS the deeper meaning of a sword called "Backbiter"? We had a deep discussion about the last two chapters of the novel, and we hit on all of the CCSS Reading Literary standards while we did it.
As the kids frantically packed up that day - because of course we had lost track of time and the other classes were already waiting for us in the hall - I announced, "Guys, I had SO MUCH FUN today!" And most of the kids agreed: "Me too!" "That was awesome!" "I never thought about the book that way!" "Can we do this again?!"
And this crazy idea of Discussion Based Reading was born. I spent my spring break working on guiding discussion questions for The Westing Game, dividing the book into reasonably sized chunks to read, and considering grading and comprehension assignments. It was going to be the best thing ever.
And - unlike twice baked pie - it was! It is! Discussion Based Reading is so fun, thought-provoking, and a way better use of my time than taking turns reading aloud! Moving my class in this direction is maybe the best thing I have ever done.
And then it occurred to me that I'd really just hijacked Socrates' concept of student-led discussions and my new "invention" of Discussion Based Reading was really the Socratic Seminar/Circle Method. (Thanks Pinterest!)
Regardless of who invented it, this is the approach that I've decided to take with all of my novels this year. I'm going to take the first 6-7 weeks of school and do a lot of direct instruction - front loading all the material the kids are going to need to know and use as we do Socratic Seminars for the novels. After we learn the basics - definitions of theme, foreshadowing, connotation/denotation, plot maps... - we will be able to apply that knowledge to our novels all year as we read (independently at home) and discuss them during class.
Of course, I'm not seeing the world through rose-colored glasses: I know that not every student is going to read. And how can I help my struggling readers muddle through a text that is still too complicated for them? I struggled with both of these issues when I first decided to plunge into this independent reading-class discussion format. I decided to commit myself to giving them 10-15 minutes of class time a day to read the assigned pages, and I agreed to let them do this in whatever way they liked best. This meant that I had some kids reading independently, hiding under their desks so no one could pester them. I had some kids reading with a buddy, and some kids reading in trios. I had a small group reading with me ("Please Mrs. Yeagle, you read it best! Read it TO us!", and I had some students tuned into my YouTube channel listening to the day's reading there. Giving them time to read during class meant that even if they didn't finish, they were far enough into the reading that they wanted to finish it, and offering so many ways to complete the reading helped me differentiate and reach the many types of learners I had in my classroom. Did some of them still not read? Absolutely - this isn't a fairy tale world, after all! But the majority of students did, and that's a win in my book.
At any rate, some inventions don't work out - like twice baked pie. But some inventions (that turn out not really to be inventions at all...) DO work out. The most important thing here is that we are never afraid to try something new, even if it may turn out to be the most terrifying, bone dry piece of pie anyone has ever consumed. Trying new things and testing the waters is never a bad thing, and happily, bad pie and bad school days can both be solved by the same thing: a healthy dose of ice cream!
(For more info on Socratic Method in classrooms, try this article from Scholastic !)
No comments:
Post a Comment