Scaffolds Prior
The chalk talk functioned as the first performance task of AP Language's dialogic unit centered around The Kite Runner. Students completed a chalk talk to make a structured, low-stakes entry into dialogism.
Task
To complete the chalk talk, students were placed in groups of four. Each student began with a sheet of paper, at the center of which was one of the following teacher-selected quotes from chapter 1 of The Kite Runner and/or teacher-generated questions:
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“That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted ally for the last twenty-six years.” What does the narrator literally mean when he says that “the past claws its way out”? Out from where? If the past is clawing, what is obstructing the past? What is in the past’s way?
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“I thought about something Rahim Khan said just before he hung up, almost as an afterthought. There is a way to be good again.” What does Rahim Khan mean by “good again”? Does one become bad? Are they made bad? Are they injured and then healed?
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“I became what I am today at the age of twelve on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. […] The winter of 1975 came along and changed everything. And made me what I am today.” Does the narrator “become” who he is, or is he “made” who he is? Are they different? Related?
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Within larger societal influences (e.g. history, religion, culture, politics, economics etc.) how much choice do people have over their own paths in life? [our essential question for the unit]
Students had 20 seconds to read the chalk talk sheet and 2.5 minutes to write a response to the quotes and/or questions. Students would then pass their sheet clockwise, receiving a sheet with a partner's writing. Students then constructed responses to students' thoughts and questions.
Materials
Students were given chalk talk sheets; the smartboard displayed a timer and a teacher-generated model:
Expectations
Students were expected to respond to the teacher-generated questions and teacher-selected quotes––but students' priorities were to generate higher-order questions for their peers and to construct answers to their peers' questions.
The chalk talks display students:
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"speculating, imagining, and hypothesizing" about the author Hosseini's rhetorical decisions, the implications of Hosseini's claims about identity's relationship with the past, and students' responses to both teacher-generated and student-generated questions;
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"arguing, reasoning, and justifying" their own claims about and responses to the topics raised by Hosseini's opening chapter;
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and "asking questions" about Hosseini and their peers' ideas.
The chalk displays students engaging in:
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"active listening," given both the time allotment and the expectation to read and respond to students' responses and questions before they respond to or inquire into Hosseini's language;
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"thinking about what is heard and giving others time to think": thanks to the structure of the chalk talk, students must thoughtfully examine and ponder students' ideas before they can dialogically contribute their own.
Significance to Future Practice
Affordances
The written silent discussion nature of the chalk talk allows all students to contribute their questions, responses, and reactions to the text for their peers' examination. The chalk talk subtracts the social nuances involved in utilizing dialogic talk as a learning tool (e.g. monitoring time taken to speak; ensuring that all peers have a chance to speak; avoiding accidentally talking over one another etc.) The subtraction of these social nuances not only cements entryways for all students to enter the conversation but also reduces stress and anxiety that may come coupled with face-to-face, verbal interaction (especially for English learners and students with social anxiety). Students' language (and not just that of The Kite Runner) functions as literary objects of analysis.
Effects on Following Artifacts
Constructing higher-order questions (i.e. questions that demand higher-order thinking, according to Bloom's Taxonomy) proved overly challenging for students. As the University of Wisconsin's Martin Nystrand et al. (1997) note about dialogism, dialogic tasks demands that "traditional teacher and learner roles are reversed," one of the critical elements inherent to a teacher's role is "asking key questions" (p. 2). Additionally, student-driven dialogic learning contrasts traditional learning in which "most instruction is about what is already known and figured out" (p. 2.). The purpose of higher-order questions is to bring the class to higher places of understanding––teacher included. To assist students with the teacher-student role reversal, in future engagements with dialogism, I provided students question stems that aligned with Bloom's Taxonomy, a schema of teaching and learning with which students were already familiar:
The chalk talk's success was predicated on students' intrinsic motivation to examine The Kite Runner and each other's thoughts: with seven groups operating simultaneously, and no way of monitoring all students' participation in the dialogic activity, the chalk talk demanded students to self-monitor their behavior, their higher-order thinking, their dialogic approaches, and how they made the best use of the time allotted. Although the chalk talk undoubtedly helped to reveal that my section of AP Language could understand and apply dialogic learning talk to construct ideas collaboratively (and perhaps would have performed better with question stems) the chalk talk also raised questions about intrinsic motivation's necessity to student-driven dialogism.