Looping in Voices

Today in Voices, the students did a looping writing exercise. For every reading day, students have to bring a one-page response to the assigned readings. These are not summaries of the reading, but Thought Pieces where the students write about their reactions about the text. They support these ideas with textual evidence.

I put the students in five groups of four and took a few minutes to explain the activity. One student would read his or her Thought Piece and instead of waiting for their turn to talk in response, the rest of the group remained silent once the reading was over. We waited for all the students who were reading aloud to finish and then I gave the class two minutes to free write a response to what was said. This process was repeated three more times for the remaining members of the group. One would read aloud, three would listen, and then two minutes of free writing. At the end of this part of the exercise, each student had three short free writes.

Then, I asked them to pick one idea from the free writes they had done and elaborate on it in another free write for five minutes. After this was done, the students were then allowed to discuss what they wrote with their group. I circulated around the groups and made notes of common themes or questions that came up. This small group discussion lasted about 10 minutes. Afterward, we finished the class with a whole-class discussion in which we talked about some ideas about the author's intent, potential symbolic meanings and what might happen next.

I thought this activity went really well and the students did quite a bit of writing today. For those who are hesitant to speak in class, this activity is great because they can simply read what they wrote and in a small group setting. We will do it again.

Next Thursday, the students will have their first Socratic Circle. I am very excited.