Leading Discussions of Literature: How Do I Get Students to Talk About Literature?

LEADING LARGE-GROUP DISCUSSIONS Much of what teachers do in the literature classroom revolves around leading large-group student discussions of literary texts. The aim is to provide students practice in learning to formulate, develop, extend their responses and to help them learn how to interact with their peers in a collaborative manner so that they are learning to mutually develop their responses through their interaction. When students share their individual private responses, they learn to build on each other’s responses to move towards formulating new, composite responses that transcend each of their own individual responses.