What I did . . .

. . . last night so that everyone could contribute something to the discussion when not everyone had read everything:

I asked each student to read aloud from one piece they'd read for class (they'd had some choices about what they could read).

I gave them some time to choose 100-150 words (a paragraph or two, a stanza or two), and then we simply went around the room (in alphabetical order based on their middle names) hearing everyone's voice.

I asked each reader to tell us page numbers so we could follow along, author's name, and selection name. After each read, I asked them to explain why they chose this passage, this author, this selection.

Results? What a fabulous discussion we had, and I heard extended speech for the first time from a couple of very shy students who almost never say more than six or seven words. The whole exercise took about an hour with my 28 students.

One more (unexpected) benefit: Many students chose the same selection (Adrienne Rich's poem "Power" came up more than once, as did Audre Lorde's poem "Power," Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" and John Updike's "Trust Me")

This repetition, hearing variously accented student voices, allowed listeners to find/hear different things in each new reading: for example, the Power poems became incredibly powerful when read by a range of readers: middle-aged white male, young African American female, young Asian American female, not-so-young white female.

I will definitely do this activity again.