This is the husband. I have been asked to contribute a guest post this week, and because I am a supporting husband I will do my best to help out and not to destroy all of the pedagogical credibility that my wife has sought to establish on this site.

Full disclosure: I am not an expert in YA lit, and beyond the Harry Potter series I have read very little of it. My wife is possibly scraping from the bottom of the barrel by resorting to my contributions, but she does always remind me that my sense of humor is exactly the same as that of her freshmen boys. And then she rolls her eyes.

I do teach, though, so I’ve got that going for me. We spent the early years of our marriage teaching high school together (I teach Spanish, she: English). A decade, two continents, three states, and five houses later (and graduate school for both of us somewhere in there) I am now teaching at a small liberal arts college and amassing an impressive array of cardigans and corduroy jackets with elbow patches. You can always judge the erudition of a person by their sweaters and elbow patches. At least that’s what I tell myself.

So, qualifications established, I shall commence my contribution to this blog.

I primarily teach Spanish classes in our World Languages & Cultures department, but one of my favorite courses to teach is our First Year Seminar course for entering students. My course is generically titled “An Intro to Critical Thinking through Chican@ Literature,” and we cover a variety of topics pertinent to the liberal arts all through the lens of Chican@ writings. My students are predominantly white, from the surrounding area, and very often first generation college students. For many, this is their first exposure to Chican@ history and readings, and I have been very pleased with our discussions and interactions in class this fall. I am impressed with how quickly the students have been able to move from relative ignorance on the issue to embracing it as another aspect of the American experience that is unique but not so different from their own lives.

Currently I am teaching Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima (1972), the groundbreaking Chican@ novel that has received significant critical and cultural acclaim in the 40+ years since its first publication. I would like to say that I have some incredibly creative lesson plans that I executed perfectly and I received a standing ovation from my students after each class. That is not the case. What has impressed me has been my students’ insights and discussions.

Since the First Year Seminar course is designed for first semester students at our institution, it is a course that lays much groundwork for the students as to what to expect from their college classes and what is expected of them. With these parameters in mind, I have made it a priority in my class to make students feel comfortable contributing to, participating in, and leading class discussions. I believe that if they can become comfortable with contributing to in-class conversations on a regular basis, then they will be able to get the most out of their college courses. We all know that these are not skills that are limited to a college classroom - they are desired for any level classroom, and are essentially desirable skills for community/civic participation and involvement.

To accomplish these goals of classroom interaction, I have modeled throughout the semester how to approach a text: What are some textual elements we are looking at?; What questions arise?; What questions are you left with?; How does this relate back to our lives? I got us started by leading discussion on the first few chapters and then I passed it over to small groups. They were responsible for creating the questions we would discuss in class and for guiding our approach to that chapter/section. Many times the groups have hit the same points that I would have. Quite often, I have been surprised by their insight into a point that I overlooked. Each time, I feel like the group has taken ownership of the discussion and genuinely wanted the rest of the class to understand the importance of their selected chapters.

This approach may well not work with younger high-school students. I am dealing with 18 year olds and they do have (some) more maturity than 13 year olds. But the moral of the story comes from the fact that I tend to be a control freak in the classroom. I like to micromanage every minute and make sure that I have plenty of activities to fill the class-time; however, I have learned that when I am able to release that desire to control and direct each component of class discussions, and when I hand that responsibility over to my students, I am often amazed by their responses and participation.

So, Bless Me, Ultima is a wonderful book to teach. There was a film adaptation made that just came out on DVD this fall and offers some great text-to-film comparisons. One of the greatest resources is the National Endowment for the Humanities' “The Big Read” pages. It comes complete with a teacher’s guide with sample lesson plans, discussion questions, and useful handouts. There is also a reader’s guide that offers history and context to the novel, and there is an audio guide and short documentary to accompany the novel. All wonderful resources.

Our class has approached the novel through the themes that it raises. Bless Me, Ultima lends itself well to discussions of myths, symbols, place, maturity, religion, critical thinking, and others. We spent a day talking about the place of myths in society and how they function for good and bad within our culture. Place is always a topic that my students can relate to, even though the hills of the Shenandoah Valley are quite different than the Llano of New Mexico. My students often feel very tied to their hometown and so can relate very well to the importance of setting and place in the novel.

Most importantly, I have found that Antonio’s coming-of-age narration is an excellent starting point for discussions on critical thinking and the process of learning. For these reasons, I think that it is an excellent book for students at a transition point in their lives, such as starting or finishing high school or college. Antonio must incorporate new knowledge into his understanding of the world, and this process is one that models critical reflection and intellectual growth.

So, when my wife discovers how I have tarnished the good name of her blog through my own lackluster writing, I may never be invited back to write a guest post again. I hope that the damage done is not irreparable. I promise, your regularly scheduled blogger will be back very soon! In the meantime, give Bless Me, Ultima a look.  

Bonus: Below is the trailer for the 2013 film adaptation of Bless Me, Ultima.

I realized recently that I did not have a book review of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars on this site, and I instantly thought, "How is that POSSIBLE?!?" I eventually came to the conclusion that I had read the book shortly before beginning this blog, which probably explains the oversight.

Anyway, I'll begin this with a long overdue review of the novel. I should start by admitting that I had ABSOLUTELY NO desire to read this book. I hadn't read John Green at all at that point (a sad oversight that I've been working on since that time), but even if I had known what a great writer he was, I still would have been reluctant to read this particular story. Everyone at school who was raving about the book would sum it up by saying that it was an amazing love story of two kids who had cancer, and that it was heartbreaking. Yuck. I was repulsed for a couple of major reasons: (1) I HATE feeling manipulated by authors, and this (very BRIEF and INADEQUATE) summary sounded like the perfect recipe for profound reader manipulation. (2) My mother died of cancer nine years ago, and while I thought (at the time) that it would be enlightening for some people to read about what cancer is like, I had my own life experience all too fresh in my memory and did not feel that I needed any help understanding it.

But then the faculty book club at school selected the novel, and I found myself reading it despite my objections. I'm SO GLAD I did.

It's true that it's a book about two teens who have cancer--but really it's a book about two brilliant, hilarious, painfully teenager-y kids who are trying to figure out life just like everyone else. Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters are two phenomenal young people, and they remind me so much of some of the amazing teenagers I've had the chance to know and work with over the past ten years--infinitely intelligent, snarky and optimistic, frighteningly unaware of the larger world. Hazel and Gus also have an obsession with an author, which leads them on all kinds of adventures. They are complex but loveable, and they live and love and discover so much that we, the readers, can't help but experience their adventures and suffering with them. Both Hazel and Gus suffer, but it is precisely their understanding of their illness that makes them such kindred spirits:

"Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but A Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile." (Green 213-14)

John Green does a phenomenal job of showing the inglorious nature  of illness--the way that it strips people of even the honor of dying with dignity. He shows the profound impact sickness has on relationships, and the way that people (especially children) who are sick are isolated from the rest of the world by imaginary lines they can neither entirely understand nor control. But what I love most about this novel is that Green does not write a story about cancer; he writes a story about two teenagers who fall in love. It's a remarkable journey, and amazingly uplifting. More than my own testimony, I judge the success of this novel by the innumerable students who have read and passed along the single copy I own. As a testament to the well-loved nature of the book, notice the tattered edges of the cover in the image above. They all love it; lots of them are counting down to the release of the film in this coming June.

Reasons to teach this novel (and activities you might want to do with it):

1. It would work phenomenally well with lit circles (so that not everyone has to read it). It's high interest and reads quickly, but it could work nicely among a selection of YA books for readers with different areas of interest.
   
2.  The Socratic Discussions that could come from this book would be remarkable. If I were to lead a discussion of this novel, I'd have them prepare by creating their own questions related to the issues that the novel addresses (five questions would probably be plenty--this works really well for high interest novels to which students can relate). Then I'd have them go through the novel to find textual support and plot examples that they thought would be relevant.
   
3. There is a film coming out this summer! If you read my blog routinely, you know how much I love using film clips as a way to discuss audience and purpose and as a way to analyze interpretations of characters.
   
4. Of any book I've read about sickness, this novel does the best job of portraying sick people as real people, and of showing how sickness impacts everyone involved.
   
5. The themes that Green presents in this novel are vast and complex, and the possibilities for exploration are endless. (i.e. the role of fate in people's lives and deaths, the brutality and ingloriousness of illness, the cruelty of time, the perseverance of the human spirit.... This list goes on.)
   
6. It is so literary! There are many allusions, and the dialogue is witty. The syntax is complex. This novel works well for analysis and is much "deeper" than many of the high interest YA novels. This would be a great novel to use as practice for style emulation if you wanted to teach students about voice or about sentence variety or character creation.
   
7. It is beautiful: profound, quotable, poignant, infinitely readable. After all, don't we want our students to learn to love language?
8. It's self-reflexive: Green is leery of the "cancer genre," and during Hazel's narration, she constantly refers to reality and the way it is different from the conventions of the genre.
9. It would pair nicely with a traditional text about star-crossed lovers. In my school, we could pair it with Romeo and Juliet, but the possibilities abound. It would also pair well with nonfiction pieces about people's experiences with cancer and informational texts about illness and its effects.
   

On this past Thursday, 75 of the English 9 students took a trip down to Staunton, VA, to see the American Shakespeare Center's rendition of Romeo and Juliet. We finished the play in class last week, wrapping up with Act V, scene iii, with almost all of the students together, out of their seats, in the front of the room, participating in that giant scene in some way. I'd been hesitant to teach Romeo and Juliet so early in the year for many reasons, including the difficulty of the text and the potential shyness of new freshmen, who might be reluctant to stand in front of the class and read/act out the play, but because the Blackfriar was putting on Romeo and Juliet this fall as part of their twenty-fifth anniversary series, I took the plunge. It's been awesome and I've had no regrets.

During our unit, we've focused on inferences, characterization, summary, and paraphrasing difficult language. Paraphrasing is a skill that I discovered students needed when I was teaching the poetry components of AP Literature. I think for many of us who are strong readers, paraphrasing seems unnecessary. However, if you cannot break it down and put it into your own words in a way that makes sense to you, you cannot truly understand the text. Now, in the case of the entirety of Romeo and Juliet, we certainly did not need to paraphrase constantly, so the students worked on reading the language (they did many of the smaller scenes aloud in their groups) and talking through the scene until they could summarize the main events. We only paraphrased occasionally. I was still concerned that they didn't get it, but when I put Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 on their skills assessment, they did an awesome job with it. That skill will help them immensely when they get ready to write their poetry research projects. We also balanced our reading with watching scenes from the Franco Zeffirelli version of the play (1968) and the Baz Luhrmann version in 1996. I wrote more about those assignments here. We did film comparisons of several scenes, and the students wrote film comparison essays for the fight scene (Act III, scene 1) that turned out really well. In my evaluation of the essays, I focused on thesis statements, supporting details with commentary explaining what those details show, and MLA format and citations. Those specific skills will prove useful when we get ready to do research projects and other writing assignments. The students made brilliant observations about what they saw, and they had strong opinions about which version was more effective and more powerful. They rarely liked both interpretations--many found the Luhrmann's to be a betrayal of the original play and valued Zeffierelli's attention to the setting and costuming of Shakespeare's time period, whereas others thought that Luhrmann's interpretation was more dramatic and better suited to reaching today's audience.

As far as my personal opinion goes, I do remember seeing the Luhrmann version  when it came out and feeling betrayed--I guess I was a purist. However, I now love both versions, and I love examining them side by side because they show the complexity of the text. Although I love both, I must confess that after all of this time of examining both of them, I find the Luhrmann twist on the final scene to be incredibly moving. I've seen that scene many times at this point, and I still get chills every time Juliet's hand grazes Romeo's face and he grabs her arm. Wow. I included that clip below for your viewing pleasure. (My teenage self was appalled by this alteration that sullied the original events in the text. Man, was I missing out.) Anyway, this continual discussion in class about interpretations led the way toward the students being great audience members and critical thinkers when we took our field trip to see it at the Blackfriar.

This discussion about whether to update/modernize the traditional aspects of older texts, particularly Shakespeare's plays, continues to be a hot discussion. The new rendition of Romeo and Juliet on Broadway resulted in this interesting NY Times article debating the merits of modernization. As far as the play we watched in Staunton, the Shakespeare troupe at the Blackfriar did a phenomenal job of blending the traditional with the contemporary. The modern elements seemed natural, not distracting, and much of the traditional elements remained intact. The street fights included switch blades and brass knuckles in addition to swords, and Tybalt fought with a clawed glove (which suited the "King o' Cats," as Mercutio calls him). On the way to the masquerade party at the Capulet mansion, the boys wore Avengers masks and acted like the superheroes. Juliet in her Converses with a formal dress and Romeo in his flannel shirt with a vest showed their youthfulness and their attempts to play adults while still being children.

The cast also did an awesome job of showing the complexity of the characters. The nurse was a cross-dressing male actor, who ranged from being a doting, mother-like figure to an intimidating bouncer. The actor playing Mercutio sucked in the audience during his "Queen Mab" monologue in Act I, encouraging us to laugh along with him and then be struck by his seriousness. Romeo was an impulsive, romantic boy who showed moments of complete devastation and weakness as he lay on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably at the prospect of exile. Lord Capulet showed his only daughter genuine affection and tenderness, and the fight between him and her at the end of Act III felt so much like a real fight had between parents and children who misunderstand each other.

The actors playing Romeo and Juliet showed the giddiness and silliness of first encounters, but they coupled that humor with the tenderness of new love. They also showed the transformation from innocence and playfulness to intimacy and seriousness as they progressed from the balcony scene in Act II to the first (and only) night they spend together in Act IV. They made their initial infatuation believable, and they swept the audience up in the headiness of their sudden, passionate love. We mourned with them and for them. We went from side-aching laughter when the nurse wouldn't tell Juliet the news from Romeo to teary eyes as the nurse mourned the loss of her beloved Juliet. When Romeo killed Paris, he used a crowbar that left Paris hung against the door to the vault--an act that showed the rashness and frantic rage filling Romeo at that moment.

That is the magic of a phenomenal theatre cast--they were able to move us from absolute hilarity to profound sadness and loss. The students were awed and amazed. Despite the length of the play, the students remained focused and seated, sucked into the magic of the events as they unfolded. Several of them talked about taking their families to see it. Lots of them talked about going back to see other plays. The students are also dying to see the new version of Romeo and Juliet that just came out in film, but sadly, it isn't showing in our area. We may have to wait until it comes out on video to watch it.

I can't wait to see how watching the play has enhanced their understanding of the text, and I look forward to hearing their insights in the Socratic discussion we have this week as our final activity for the unit.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Thank you so much for all of the emails and comments regarding this post and the materials I created. As of 9/4/14, the materials are now available on TeachersPayTeachers at my (newly created) store, Teaching the Apocalypse. Please check it out and download the materials from there (you'll have to create an account to download the materials). If they are useful to you, please RATE THEM on this page, and leave comments. You can FOLLOW ME on TpT, where I will soon post more materials and activities.

As you are likely aware, Divergent by Veronica Roth is a young adult dystopian novel that was first released in April of 2011. The second in the series, Insurgent, was released in May of 2012. According to my students, the next book, Allegiant, will be released in October of this year. The first novel, which is what I will focus on in this post, revolves around the choices that a teenage girl must make as she moves toward adulthood. It is set in a dystopian futuristic Chicago where the society is divided into factions based on which attribute they most value (bravery, truth, peace, knowledge, or selflessness). At the beginning of the book, the main character must choose her faction, and once she makes that choice, she must learn to live with the impact of that decision. Meanwhile, the world around her is rapidly changing and deteriorating in ways she only begins to discover. For more information about the book series, you can see Veronica Roth's page. Here's the trailer for the movie to be released in March 2014.

Above all else, I judge teen lit by how much excitement it generates in my students. We read Divergent in August, and I still had students talking about the movie and showing me images of the new book cover as late as May. I had three copies of Insurgent for the classroom, and they were constantly in demand and read (voluntarily) by almost half of my students. This book series resonates with the students and generates a tremendous amount of interest and excitement in reading. It is exciting and dares students to consider their own bravery, but it is also the story of a teenage girl discovering love and romance, which the students enjoy as much as they do the intensity of the action.

Last year, I began the year for English 9 with Divergent. The unit revolved around active engagement and how to make choices in the classroom and in the community. One of the things I loved about beginning the year that way was that students used Divergent during our SSR (sustained silent reading) time. That made it easier for them to adjust to SSR, and it was also nice because it allowed students who flew through the reading to move on to other books while giving students who took longer to read the support and time that they needed to get through the novel.

The novel focuses on choice--the fact that above all else, the choices that we make determine what happens in our lives. It also highlights the interrelationship between choices and the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Because it was the beginning of the year and the beginning of my students' high school careers, we focused on parallels between choices in the novel and choices that they were making in their own lives and as citizens within the school community. I used nonfiction and poetry supplements to enhance the novel and highlight the skills that we were developing.

The unit revolved around three essential questions:

• What does it mean to be an engaged learner?

• Why is it important to understand your role in society?
• How do we make choices and how do those choices impact our community?

As far as skills are concerned, I focused on point-of-view, characterization, tone, inference and close reading skills (including annotation). As we moved toward the end of the novel, we focused on theme and finding textual support to prove theme statements. The students completed plot questions and double entry journals for homework (I've attached a sample of that assignment below). For assessment, I used quick reading quizzes and daily formative skills checks. We had discussions and practiced the skills with supplemental readings. As far as major assessments, I used two skills assessments. The first was an excerpt from a major scene in the novel and the second was a cold reading passage. We also had a Socratic discussion at the end of the novel for which the students prepared, and the students wrote responses to some guided questions on Schoology prior to the discussion. For more information about Socratic discussions, see my previous post.

The document below includes the way that I broke up the reading, a description of their homework and a model of the double-entry journal. It also includes the homework for chapters 1-4. In the journals, the students moved from practicing inferences to tone and finally to theme statements. If you like this activity and are interested in having more of the packet, please feel free to contact me directly. These journal entries could certainly be modified to use in class as a way to reflect on and respond to the reading.

The final project required students to create their own factions. It was a research project and it included a group presentation. The students had to come up with the faction characteristics and create a name with a complex meaning. They had to find a possible representative from real life of that faction and research the person's life as an illustration of how that person demonstrated the traits of the faction, and they had to make connections to the novel with passages from the book. Here is a PDF of the assignment sheet, the rubric for the projects, the audience participation guide, and the peer and self-evaluation that I created last year.

Phew! That just about sums it up, I guess. I do have more materials and activities that went with the unit (in case you're interested), but I tried to include the major assignments and the general approach.  As far as changes for this coming year, I will likely NOT teach tone as one of the main skills with this novel. I discovered that because the novel has so much dialogue, many students became confused between characterization and tone. They would focus on a character's specific tone in his/her words instead of finding the tone of the passage, and it was challenging to explain the nuances of the difference. They found clarity as we looked at descriptive passages, but it was perhaps an unnecessary confusion. I might also drop the double entry journal entries down from two entries to one (or have them do one at home and one in class). The length of the novel was overwhelming for some students, so I will do more next year to help them with modifications as needed. We have a couple of copies of the audio of the novel, and one of our ELL teachers created chapter summaries of the novel that we'll use for struggling students. I'm also considering teaching Romeo and Juliet first this coming year so that students can take a field trip to see the play at the amazing Staunton replica of the Blackfriar Playhouse before it leaves in November, so I will likely introduce some of the concepts such as inference and close reading skills at an earlier time.

As a final thought, I'd like to encourage teachers considering teaching YA lit in the classroom to take the plunge. At my school, many people are very supportive--in fact, this last year, we purchased Divergent and the whole school read it at some point during the year. I know that may not be the case everywhere, but I find that we as educators can continue discovering the balance between classical, canonical texts and contemporary texts written for teens. Many students (both boys and girls)  told me that Divergent was the first book that they had honestly read from cover to cover, and that paved the way to a much more prosperous year as far as silent reading and setting individual reading goals. What I love most about YA lit is the way that the stories address complex issues (such as why wars happen and how to make difficult choices and face your fears) in ways that are accessible and appealing to teens.  I've read SO MANY amazing YA books that would work well in the classroom. The Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare is amazing, as is the Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion (how do I not have a post on that novel yet? Coming soon...) would be an awesome novel to teach, and it would work nicely as an exploration of text-to-text comparisons with a focus on audience since the film and novel are quite different. I also love the idea of teaching the first book in a series because that gives students a great jumping off point for their own reading. As far as realistic fiction, I just read Hold Still by Nina LaCour, which addresses the impact of suicide on a community, and our department discussed teaching John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, which includes teen romance, the role of fate, and illness.

Have you taught (or are you considering teaching) any YA lit novels in your class? Please share your comments and ideas! I look forward to learning what others are doing with this amazing genre.

        My favorite class days tend to be those during which the students engage in discussions. While I've tried a wide variety of Socratic discussions, I will focus today on how to start using them if you're trying them out for the first time or looking for new ways to approach discussion. Socratic discussions can feel terrifying for teachers because there are a wide range of uncontrollable variables. However, I would argue that end results are always worth the initial trepidation that both the teacher and the students might feel. These kinds of discussions lead to a rich form of learning as the students guide one another (and themselves) toward discovery of new ideas and beliefs. They are truly in charge of their own learning, and they often discover that they have their own thoughts and voice, and that others both respect and value their opinions.
        When first beginning, it is best to give clear guidelines and structure. Students do better when they prepare for the discussion ahead of time and when the discussion is rooted in the close reading of a text that they have all read and understand.
        They also need to know what is expected. I usually ask them to comment at least three times with meaningful contributions (with a cutoff on the max number of contributions as well--usually 6 times). When they are generating the questions, I require that they each ask at least two questions. I have seen teachers use different ways to help students gauge their discussion--I just have them keep a tally on their paper, but some students use beans or cards or other methods to help students count down the number of things they need to do.
        We always sit in a circle for these discussions. When possible, we go to a different space (the library for example) so that it feels more formal and breaks up the routine of class. When we participate as a whole class (which seems to work best, at least until students get the hang of these kinds of discussions), I take notes on what everyone says. I let a student facilitate the discussion.
        We have a Socratic discussion at least once per major work that we read. For example, for Romeo and Juliet this year, I used Dana Huff's idea of focusing the discussion around the question "Who is most responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet?" When preparing for that unit, I only read through her information on teaching Romeo and Juliet, but on her site she has other great information about Socratic seminars and ways to use them in class. For other ideas on teaching Romeo and Juliet, refer to my previous post.
        For Of Mice and Men, the students first participated in online discussions using schoology.com, and then we used those questions as a starting point for the verbal discussion. They moved from those questions (for which they had already prepared answers) to their own questions about the text.
        In our most recent unit on Night, we actually had two Socratic discussions. The first was shortly after they watched the Class Divided documentary (see the previous post for comments on this activity). For that discussion, the students silently answered a series of questions addressing tolerance and discrimination. A few students who finished the reading for the day early wrote down the questions on big paper and we posted them around the room. Students wrote their responses and contemplated the issues before having the discussion. The second discussion focused on the memoir itself, and the students generated their own questions for that discussion. They began by discussing three questions I had asked them ahead of time, and from there they asked their own questions related to the text. For the second discussion, I broke each class into two smaller groups and had a scribe and facilitator for each group. This was remarkably successful in most classes.
        If the students are going to create their own questions, they need models and guidelines. They will typically begin with plot-based questions that can be answered directly by the plot events. Once they begin to understand that the best questions will not have a single answer nor will they be something that can be right or wrong, they will start formulating questions that lead to better discussions. Through their creation of questions, they will make their own inferences about the text and will require their fellow students to make inferences as well. I always encourage them to create at least 5 questions of their own prior to the discussion since there are often duplicates, and if there is a significant lull during the conversation, I prompt them to pause and create one new question that they are willing to posit to the group.
        Another vital part of these activities is self-reflection and self-evaluation. After each discussion, I ask students to thoughtfully reflect on their participation. I have them give themselves a score from 1 to 10 with a justification. (As an aside, I use self-evaluation frequently and find it to be helpful with many activities. I do guide them on how to score themselves, so in this case, I remind them that a 1 equates to a 10%, and that the only people who deserve a 1 would be those students who are passed out on their desks, drooling. One of the benefits of this kind of activity is that no one is completely disengaged--no one deserves that low of a score. I tell them that a 10 means that they were focused the entire time on what everyone said, and that they spoke neither too little nor too much. I know teachers are often reluctant to let students self-evaluate, but I find that their scores often reflect mine, and that if they are different, the students are often harsher on themselves.) In their reflection, I also ask them to comment on what they did well and what they could do to improve. I also ask them to write about what they learned from others throughout their discussion (what comments were most salient and/or impacted the way that they view the issue discussed or the world).
        Students love these discussions, and they always leave them feeling energized and interested. They are a way for me to recharge as well, since students often say the exact things that we as educators long for them to think and say, and they come about those discoveries on their own. I also love the way they look out for each other and encourage each other to speak and participate (which becomes a more prominent feature of the discussions each time we have them). They are a wonderful way to have a cumulative assessment in addition to the written assessments we traditionally give, and they are a good way to let students demonstrate what they know about a text if the written assessment uses cold readings and application of skills.
        What are you doing in your classrooms? Please leave comments here and share your ideas!