Silent Conversation
Upon finishing their reading of Lord of the Flies, in an attempt to get students to explore their personal experience with the book, I asked them as a Do Now activity to reflect on something that interested, annoyed, confused, or frightened them, or something that seemed familiar or weird. They then spent time reading and responding to what their classmates wrote.
Categories of Response
In her writing on literature response journals, Hancock (2000) identifies and explores different types of response students exhibit toward literature. At the secondary level, these categories of response fall under one of three larger umbrella categories: immersion categories, detachment categories, and self-involvement categories. I have applied these categories as a lens to examine the students' silent conversations about Lord of the Flies.
Immersion CategoriesImmersion categories include responses that display understanding of the text, character introspection, predicting events, or questioning. In the example below, the initial student response is a clarifying question.
The first student writes, “When the boat came, the leader of the boat said that Ralph put on a good show. I was confused because does this mean that they were watching them the whole time?” The rest of the silent conversation shows a collaborative effort to understand this point and extend it to both evaluate the text (“If what you thought were true, I think it would make the story much more interesting”) and draw an intertextual connection (“Reminds me of the Hunger Games”).
Below is another example of a silent conversation that includes immersion responses: The first student writes, "I was pretty shocked at the ending especially when the officer said anyone die? Ralph answered only two, as if two people dead isn't enough." The responding students offer interpretations that differ from this understanding of what Ralph says. The second student offers an explanation that shows an attempt to get inside the head of the character, stating, "He answer like that because he wants to make sure that only two people die and to still have his humanity," while the third student suggests, "He is saying that I think to imply there could have been more deaths." Like the second student, the fourth student also shows introspective insight, writing, "I think the officer thought that they were lying…" However, the fourth student also assesses the character of the naval officer: "The officer doesn't seem as concerned as he should be." With this, the response crosses over into the self-involvement categories.
Detachment CategoriesWhen the reader expresses an evaluation of the text or digresses from the text to discuss ideas beyond the context of the book, the response indicates a level of detachment. The following two silent conversations show examples of detachment responses:
Central to this silent conversation is the overall hatred of the book that is shared by all the students.
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In this silent conversation, the first student's response can be considered digressive where it refers to the act of reading itself and other activities that the student enjoys. What the second student writes about disliking bugs and camping also shows a digression from the text.
Self-Involvement CategoriesAccording to Hancock, responses fall into self-involvement categories when the reader identifies with a character, assesses a character, or becomes personally involved in the story. In the initial response in the conversation below, the student describes both a physical and emotional response to the text that can be categorized as story involvement.
Like other story involvement responses, the first student's description of being "creeped out" and having "goosebumps" shows a direct interaction with the text. Responses in this category often reflect a satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what is happening in the story, and the above response does this, as well, when the student writes, "The whole book was disturbing and frightening, but there was one scene that made me feel very afraid, confused, and annoyed at the same time."
In another example (below) of a silent conversation including self-involvement responses, students show an attempt to solve a character's problem by putting themselves in his shoes: Showing character identification, the first student writes, "I mean if I saw something coming towards me or even heard a sound, I'd move out the way not just stand there and panic. I get that it was sudden but seriously get out the way."
Rosenblatt argues that when a reader takes an aesthetic stance, she will shift her attention inward and focus on "what is being created during the actual reading. A much broader range of elements will be allowed to rise into consciousness, not simply the abstract concepts that the words point to, but also what those objects or referents stir up of personal feelings, ideas, and attitudes…. Out of these ideas and feelings, a new experience, the story or poem, is shaped and lived through" (1982, p. 269). Of the different categories of response, self-involvement responses correspond with this description of an aesthetic stance and ought to be encouraged as a way of helping students experience a text in a firsthand, personal way. |
Implications
Reflecting on this activity, I was excited by the variety of responses the silent conversations produced. I think the students would have benefited from being introduced to this type of activity earlier in the book and returning to it throughout the unit as a way of checking in with themselves. As an ongoing project, the silent conversations could help students become more self-aware in terms of the ways in which they interact with a text and whether their responses (either the type of response or what specifically they are responding to) change throughout the course of a book or from one book to another.
Another useful application of this activity would be to use it as a way to guide and inform class discussions on the text. By selecting topics for discussion brought up by students in their responses, I could make the class more student-centered and arguably more conducive to students forming meaningful, personal connections with the text.
Another useful application of this activity would be to use it as a way to guide and inform class discussions on the text. By selecting topics for discussion brought up by students in their responses, I could make the class more student-centered and arguably more conducive to students forming meaningful, personal connections with the text.