Interactive Discussions About Texts

Students learn from each other. Web boards, newsgroups, listservs, chat rooms, etc. facilitate principles of interactive learning enormously. But the same principles work well even when students record responses in group journals or write a conversation by passing a sheet of paper from one to the other. Students can use written discussions to:

· Write and share answers to questions we assign about a text

· Raise their own questions about a text, make observations, and get others to respond

· Share their drafts of a response to a reading assignment and get suggestions from classmates for revising

· Come up with a group interpretation of a text

· Exchange resources for purposes of group evaluation and research

· Collaborate on solving a problem we assign them

Let’s do it: Text-Talk

1) We’ll try to get on the Internet to look up a website that we think we could use in our class. If that’s not possible, let’s write an open-ended prompt that would encourage discussion about a reading assignment you’ve asked students to do recently

2) Share your prompt with others and describe how you think it could encourage discussion and interaction among your students

Evaluating and Using Internet Resources

The World Wide Web has also been termed the “World Wide Wastebasket” because of the hastily crafted websites and opinion-based junk that anyone can post. How can we help students develop as critical readers of the Web?

Students more readily benefit from reading and using Internet sources if we help them generate their own criteria for evaluating websites. Generating criteria helps them to achieve ownership, so they will use the criteria more responsibly and consistently.

We’ll go to the following URL to develop criteria: <http://www.engl.niu.edu/mday/web/wmc.html>

Let’s do it: A Web-based Activity

Let’s locate, read, and write about a Web source that students could investigate in our subject area. We have handouts of websites for national organizations in our subject areas, if we want a place to start.

We’ll use the criteria we develop to write a short critique of the web page, touching on as many of the criteria as are relevant. Then we’ll use our evaluation to support a claim about whether the page would provide a good resource for a written project in our subject area.

Assembling and Assessing Our Portfolios

At the end of today’s workshop, we’ll have done several pieces of writing: our response to a challenging text, a reading-strategies activity, an assignment making the reading/writing connection, a prompt for a text-based discussion, & a web-based activity.

Let’s each choose the 3 pieces we think best illustrate what we’ve gained from our work together. Then we’ll write a reflection explaining why we chose these 3 pieces. Include the following: What value have these 3 pieces had in helping you think about the kinds of reading & writing activities you want your students to do? How do these 3 pieces represent new or different ideas you now have about the link between reading & writing? How does one of these 3 pieces reflect an idea you’ll try out in class—and why?

When we’ve each assembled our portfolios & placed the cover letters together with the 3 pieces, let’s each ask 2 colleagues to read through your portfolio and reflection, answering the following:

1. THE REFLECTION: What’s one point you found thought-provoking about your colleague’s reflection, and why?

2. THE 3 SHORT PIECES: Which piece interested you the most, and why?

3. OVERALL: What did you find most valuable about reading your colleague’s work?