Analysis 2
AP English Language & Composition
AP English Language & Composition
Clip 1 – Student-Generated Questions
1. Why did the author use a different rhetorical strategy
for chapter 3 than chapter 2?
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2. Why does Amir talk about his father at all, given that his relationship with his father seems toxic?
Clip 2 – Student-Generated Questions
1. Do you think that Baba hates the narrator [his son] for stealing/leading to the death of his wife away from him?
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2. Why does Baba share his grief with the narrator who, at the time, is only a child?
I have selected these two literature circle recordings because clip 1 exhibits a dialogue comprising seamless co-construction of literary observations and inquiry, while clip 2 exhibits a more debated discussion involving peer-to-peer misinterpretations and struggles with developing inquiry.
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Scaffolds Prior
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On a day of class prior, students practiced performing an un-recorded literature circle. This practice helped transition students from primarily teacher-generated questions (displayed in the chalk talk and pass-toy discussions) to student-generated questions.
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Students were given 7 minutes before the literature circle to construct at least two questions about the rhetoric of The Kite Runner.
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At the beginning of class, we reviewed chapter 3 (the focus of the literature circles).
Task
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Literature circles task students with exploring their own inquiries into the text. For 15 minutes, groups of 4 to 5 students (the same groups used throughout the entire dialogic unit) explored and co-constructed answers to their pre-generated questions about the text, following new questions as they were raised by the dialogue.
Materials
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lined paper, to record student-assigned discussion roles, student-generated questions, and main takeaways
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question stems, one per group, printed on cardstock
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timer on smartboard (15 minutes)
Expectations
Students were expected to:
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contribute consistently to the dialogue;
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fulfill their literature circle role, while
recognizing that their lit circle role was not their only role; -
repeatedly string together ideas shared by peers to arrive at
increasingly higher-order places of understanding.
The literature circles display students:
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speculating, imagining and hypothesizing explanations to student-generated questions.
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"What other reasons might the narrator go into such depth telling the audience about his father if he doesn't like him?"
(clip 1, 3:40–3:55) -
"It might just be background information for a story that he's gonna tell in the next chapter" (4:30–4:36)
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arguing, reasoning, and justifying interpretations of the text's rhetoric and plot.
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"He don't show hatred: he just upset" (clip 2, 8:22–8:25)
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explaining complex ideas about and connections within the text.
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"In traditional D&D (dungeons-and-dragons) style, there's a dragon, they kidnap the princess, but the king's practically a side character––so similarly, why is there so much detail about the narrator's dad?" (clip 1, 4:08–4:30).
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"He says [in chapter 1] that that changes his life" (clip 1, 4:42–4:45).
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asking questions, specifically their startup student-generated questions and subsequent follow-up questions.
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"Why would his father say that [to his son]?" (clip 2, 10:00–10:05)
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analyzing and solving problems, using text and text-based inferences to answer questions. ​
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The literature circles display students engaging in:
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active listening necessary to sustain a 15-minute conversation.
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being (somewhat) receptive to multiple alternate viewpoints, a task that is occasionally substituted with debate and leaning into one's own respective viewpoint (clip 2, 8:00–9:30)​
Significance to Future Practice
Affordances
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Student-driven conversation in a relatively small setting of 3 to 4 other peers allows students to feel more comfortable contributing and synthesizing ideas.
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Charging each student with generating their own questions and selecting their two favorite questions as a group ostensibly increases student interest in the literature circle and intrinsic motivation to share ideas.
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(As opposed to the written chalk talk) the verbal nature of the literature circle provides more frequent opportunities for students to practice using dialogue stems in a real-world context.
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The combination of the dialogue stems and prior exposure to dialogism in the chalk talk and literature circle practices trains a habit around co-constructing ideas.
Challenges
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Although the teacher can listen to conversations in retrospect, the teacher cannot keep track of all conversations in real time.
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The responsibility of monitoring student speech falls heavily unto the students; although this helps to train students' self-awareness about the nature of dialogism, without strong and reliable self-awareness, the teacher cannot be present to respect students' zones of proximal development.
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Students reported that the literature roles sometimes felt ambiguous and subsequently helpful.
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Students (especially as seen in Clip #2) can easily fall out of co-constructive dialogue and into argumentative debate.
Effects on Following Artifacts
​The literature circle displayed my students' capacity to transition between written dialogue around teacher-generated questions and verbal dialogue around student-generated questions. The literature circle clips reveal that students could employ dialogic language to co-construct ideas––but perhaps not as consistently as ideal. Especially around issues as contentious as those raised by The Kite Runner, students entering debate is a natural response to their higher-order questions about the text. However, it is precisely in those points of contention that dialogue is most important: dialogue advances not a partisan "right answer" but a collaborative synthesis of varying viewpoints. As Russian philosopher Mikhail Bahktin defines, "discourse is dialogic [...] because it is continually structured by tension, even conflict, between the conversants, between self and other, as one voice 'refracts' another (as quoted in Nystrand, et. al., 1997, p. 8). That "tension," though, should signal spaces of further understanding and suspended personal ––and not divisions between different viewpoints. Differentiating dialogue and discussion/debate became the next focus of dialogic scaffolding for the class.
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