Bypassing traditional questions about character and plot, Colorado kids are pushing themselves to new literary levels in groups of their peers. Conversations are staged in the classroom, but a growing number of kids are reading and discussing books, from classics to contemporary literature, in Junior Great Books groups. Facilitated by parents and teachers, the book-discussion program flexes underutilized muscles of critical thinking by pushing young readers to plow uncharted territory: their own ideas.
“Most of the construction of the meaning comes from students,” said Denise Ahlquist, vice president of training for Great Books, a nonprofit educational organization in Chicago. “You get people talking about what they’ve read, not just reciting facts. You get differences of opinion, students saying things like, ‘I never saw it that way’ and ‘What made you think that?”‘
Students tend to talk more than teachers in Junior Great Books discussions, Ahlquist said. Used with millions of students in grades kindergarten through high school, Junior Great Books trains teachers and parents to facilitate book discussions using questions that have an array of possible answers. Settings range from classrooms and libraries to churches, and are said to engage even the shyest kids.
“Even the quiet kids raise their hands,” said Henrietta Perlman, assistant director of the Great Books’ Western division. “Light bulbs go off in people’s minds. It can be great for self-esteem.”
In most school districts, the book groups are voluntary; in others, including Denver Public Schools, they’re required.
Unlike the traditional “call-and-response” technique used in classrooms, which relies on acknowledged literary analyses, Junior Great Books is designed to push students toward new understandings of the text, said Susan Marion, a secondary literary coordinator for DPS. It is new to many students who have become comfortable reciting what they think is a good answer or a perceived right answer, she added.
With Junior Great Books “students learn interpretive skills,” Marion continued. “It’s more about building thinking skills than leading students to an established understanding of literature.” Responding to open-ended questions, students must use the text to support their answers.
Questions are interpretive (deciphering the meaning of the text when evidence suggests two answers) versus evaluative (readers use their own experience to explain an answer). An example of an interpretive question is: “Why do you think this character did this in the story?”; an evaluative question would be: “What do you think about the relationship between the two characters?”
That there can be more than one answer has been difficult for some teachers, Marion said. “Most teachers want to lead students somewhere specific,” she said. “It’s hard to let go when you’re used to being the authority figure and shift from teacher as authority to teacher as guide, but there is no one interpretation, no right interpretation.”
Parents who volunteer for the program say they appreciate that their kids will be encouraged to explore their own ideas and share them in a safe environment. “It teaches them to respect each others’ opinions,” said Lisa Beatty, whose children will participate in the program at Blessed Sacrament School in Denver next year. “There’s no pressure to come up with the right answer, so they learn to talk about literature without being afraid someone’s going to mock their ideas.”
Book selections for the program range from “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “The Great Gatsby” to “The Scarlet Letter” and a series of anthologies. “I remember thinking that they were thought-provoking selections, real gems,” said Maureen Foss, a parent facilitator whose three daughters participated in the program. She remembers that certain books like “Gaston,” by William Saroyan, generated lively discussion among sixth-graders. “They were really opinionated about the story,” she said.
Over the past few years, Great Books has broadened its selection of anthologies to include authors of color and women, Marion said. “It used to be a lot of dead white guys, but they have expanded their definition of the canon (classics) to include Zora Neale Hurston and Tony Bombara.”
That students are required to find evidence in the text to support their answers helps them grasp subtle aspects of the story that are otherwise overlooked, say facilitators. The process improves reading comprehension, fosters confidence, and builds critical thinking skills while, it is hoped, increasing kids’ interest in reading.
“You learn to go more in-depth, which I really liked,” said Maura Foss, a 15-year-old student who participated in the program from third through fifth grade at Stober Elementary School in Jefferson County. A self-described avid reader, Maura now brings a different set of questions to the books she reads as a result of the program. “I’m a really great reader now,” she adds. “The more you practice the better you get at it.”
Students read selections twice before discussions, and most are not graded, though some teachers give points for participation. Third grade is the most popular for the program, although Junior Great Books has been offered in all grades since the early 1960s. In 2004, at least 30 Colorado groups, from large cities like Denver to smaller towns like Fleming, participated in the program, which was started by the Great Books Foundation in 1940.
The foundation schedules about 300 trainings annually for parents and teachers in the U.S. The number was closer to 400 in the late ’90s, said Ahlquist, who attributes the decline to budget cuts. The majority of the training is for teachers, but parents make up 15 percent of the total and pay $75-$129 for instruction.
Foss, whose mother volunteered in her classrooms, believes that the Junior Great Books program will have a lasting impact on her daughters. “Hopefully it will influence them … to read more critically,” she said.
The program was recently approved for use in all Littleton schools, and it is required in DPS classrooms as part of a curriculum redesign that stretches across all subjects, Marion said. At the heart of the redesign is the Great Books concept of “shared inquiry,” an approach to learning that centers on discussion and socialization of text. Marion likened the shared-inquiry concept to an apprenticeship and said that kids start to assess literature like writers and literary analysts.
“The shared-inquiry approach is part of a national and international English trend toward dialogical classrooms,” and DPS teachers are at the front end of that trend, Marion said. “We now know that students learn by socialization, they learn more deeply, and express (their) thinking through dialogue around the text.”
Last fall, 200 DPS high school teachers went through the Junior Great Books training and started facilitating discussions in February. In March, Spanish teachers went through the training and will apply the program’s principles to their curriculum.
Over the past few years, Mollie McDonald, director of curriculum and assessment for the Littleton School District, has seen more general classroom teachers take an interest in the program. In the past, Junior Great Books was primarily used in the gifted-and-talented classes, but the majority of teachers who attended training in 2004 were from general classrooms. “These are good questions, and the questioning technique really stretches all readers,” said McDonald. “Using the inquiry method, students begin asking deeper questions; there is a deeper comprehension for students.”
Questions used to facilitate discussion are formulated to increase interaction between kids that will prompt them to analyze the author’s goals, said Ahlquist. The intent is to differentiate reading from other aspects of school, which kids may think of in terms of “facts they have to memorize,” she said.
“We want people to think more carefully about what they read and realize that different people can see things differently,” Ahlquist said. That process, she hopes, will prepare students for the world in which they live and its problems, which have no easy solutions. “We want kids to look under the surface, to question and not just go with their first reaction,” she said. “We want them to realize that there’s more to think about than they may have realized.”
Heather Grimshaw is a Golden-based freelance writer.
