Literacy Tips and Tricks
Practical Strategies for Fostering Literacy Across the Content Areas
We’ve all had those class discussions. You know the ones—the ones where only three students raise their hands to share their insights while the rest of the class doodles on their notebooks, finishes their homework for the next class, or tries to sneak off a text message to friends.
As teachers, we know the value of having students share their opinions, their insights, and their misunderstandings. We want them to be prepared for active citizenship in which they can speak their minds and question each other.
Ultimately, in the words of Harvey Daniels, Steven Zemelman, and Nancy Steineke in Content-Area Writing, “American schools should graduate people who can raise hell when it is necessary and possess the tools to do so.” That’s why, despite the many drawbacks to whole-class discussion, we continue to try to engage students in this type of dialogue.
Two techniques, the write-around and the silent discussion, are exceptionally powerful writing-to-learn activities whose efficiency and student accountability make them fabulous alternatives to whole-class discussions. In both, students write their own responses to a topic, and then pass their papers to other students. Students then read and respond in writing to the previous responses, thereby creating a “string of conversation as the papers circulate around the table.” Unlike whole-class discussion, write-arounds and silent discussions engage each student in conversation.
The following pages, taken from Content-Area Writing, explain both of these processes in detail.

Write-Around

The following text is fromContent-Area Writing by Daniels, Zemelman, and Steineke.

Strategy Overview:Divide students into groups of four (groups of three or five work as well). Each student signs his or her name or initials in the left-hand margin of the paper, and then writes an initial comment on the chosen topic. Students continue to write until the teacher says “pass.”

Papers rotate (in the same direction each time) and the students read the entries on the page and respond to them in writing (being sure to write their name/initials in the margin as well) until “pass” is called again. Students can explain their reaction, write a comment, ask questions, share connections, agree or disagree, or raise a whole new idea. This process is repeated until all students in the group have read and commented on the conversation strand on each paper. Students should use all of the time provided by the teacher for writing (no finishing early and goofing off) and should remain silent while passing.

The length of writing time provided for each commenting session can vary, but usually the time is longer with each pass as students have to read more writing each time. And while teachers may tell students that they have two minutes to write on the topic, the teacher should be walking around, monitoring the student writing and adjusting time as necessary.

Once the paper is back to the person who wrote the original comment, the original author reads through the entire “write-around” conversation. At this point, students usually want to continue the written conversation aloud in a group.Give students a couple of minutes to continue the conversation, using their writings to help guide the discussion. The teacher may also want students to discuss a more focused prompt or formulate an answer to an essential question at this point in their small group discussion.

Now that students have written and discussed in small groups, have each group share out one highlight or thread of their discussion. These might be things that they spent time on, something that sparked lively debate, or something they argued or laughed about.

What Can Go Wrong:Unprepared Students. As long as every student has shared the experience to be discussed (watched the video, heard the lecture, did the reading, etc.), the strategy works well and is face-paced. However, if students have not participated in the experience, you will need to devise a plan for those students who are unprepared. That can be accomplished by:

  • Holding them out of the write-around so they can catch up on the work and so no group will be saddled with a blank writer taking turns at their table.
  • Let unprepared students participate in the write-around by sharing whatever they do know for their first entry and then writing insightful and intelligent questions about other students’ entries when they receive them.

Penmanship. Bad penmanship can hurt a write-around as it makes it difficult for others to read or respond. Encourage students to write legibly before the write-around begins.

Slow Thinkers. Some students take a bit more processing time than others. Explaining that students write at different rates and that the expectation is that everyone write as much as they can in the time that is given may help students be more understanding of one person producing less or more writing than others. Teachers might also try grouping by student writing fluency so that those who need more time to write are not with the verbose.

Variations:Silent Discussion. After reading, viewing, or hearing about subject matter, each student jots down two questions about it that he or she has. These must be “big fat questions” that invite interpretation, discussion or argument, not closed-ended, factual recall questions. Students then pass their papers the same direction (no grouping needed). The receiving student must pick one of the two questions to comment on or answer and THEN write down a new question—either a brand-new one on the topic or a follow-up to one of the two originals. Then students pass the papers again. The receivers read and choose one of the unanswered questions to respond to and add another new question. This can be repeated three to five times before pulling back for whole-class discussion.