Conver-Stations for Literary Discussion

Students have been reading, discussing, and interacting with a text. You can use Conver-stations to guide students’ discussion over any chapter/section of a text. You can pull questions from previous readings to reinforce skills or make connections between different sections to engage prior knowledge with present learning.

Students are meaningfully learning by making connections on their own based on teacher-created questions by citing the text and exploring it to back up their analysis of the text.

This activity includes students moving from one group to another (either physically in an in-person setting, or from one breakout room to another in a virtual/hybrid setting), visual displays of the questions on student devices or the classroom screen, listening and speaking with peers, as well as writing down ideas, questions, and connections to the text in the discussion. Students can then share ideas in a variety of ways (whole class discussion, pair and share, written, recorded using Flipgrid or similar program).

This lesson aligns with CRP tenets by allowing students to interact with a variety of their peers. This allows for students to hear multiple perspectives and also allows students to create authentic connections between whatever novel they are studying and their own life. To take things a step further towards student advocacy, the teacher can even create discussion questions that tie the learning in the novel to the community, the classroom, the school, etc. Consider, as the instructor, what learning from the novel can apply to students’ everyday lives. The teacher can choose to use a novel that reflects the experiences of their students in order to create the most culturally responsive approach. For example, a teacher might use the novel Seedfolks, and then allow students to examine food insecurity, culture, etc. of their neighborhood and create ways to move towards a solution (start a community garden, pass out seedlings to schoolmates or the neighborhood, etc.)

Technology is used in a variety of ways. First, the teacher can create a  slide deck of questions about the section of the novel to be discussed and use this to guide student learning by projecting it onto the classroom screen. Students can use their devices to take notes and write down ideas during discussion and then use some sort of tool (i.e. FlipGrid) to synthesize their learning, ideas, and questions after the activity, which allows other students to then react to those ideas for a more meaningful experience.

This activity is best used as a formative assessment. You can have students prepare their own questions for discussion prior to Conver-stations and use the student-created questions for the activity, or the teacher can create the question and assess students after the activity by asking them to reflect: what did they learn, what did they notice, and what new questions or ideas do the students have as a result of discussion? (You could also do both of these things for a dual-assessment). Teachers can also formatively assess student understanding by observing the learners and listening to their insights while they speak with peers.

The purpose of the assessment is to see how students can interact with the text, not only to assess what they learned from reading, but also to see how they can cite examples from the text to create ideas, draw conclusions, etc. about a question they are asked to respond to.

The assessments are UDL-friendly because students can share their ideas in a variety of ways, whether that be verbally (to a peer, on FlipGrid, audio recording, etc.) or in writing (paper/pencil or typed digitally). They can also, if the teacher is asking the students to generate the Conver-station questions, either submit their questions in writing, or share them by speaking them in one of the methods suggested above. These assessments are also CRP-friendly because this method can be applied to any type of literature or any book. Ideally, the book is one that is responsive to the students in the room (they can see themselves in the story). It also allows for students to interact with each other and in the assessment piece, students can talk about what they learned from their peers, or how their peers’ ideas gave them new insights or questions to consider.

You can check student understanding by the questions they submit prior to the activity (if the teacher chooses to do this), as they will have to cite the portion of the story that the questions originate from. Teachers can also check for what students know and can do by what they say, record, or how they participate during the actual Conver-station activity where students are holding discussion, as they will have to direct their peers to the page and information in the text that led to their answer. Finally, educators can check for understanding of student knowledge through the student reflection after the activity where they share what their group discussed and what new insights, ideas, or questions they have now as a result, where they will also cite specific examples or instances from the story.