Asking Compelling Questions

In order to internalize what they are learning, students need to participate in intellectual communities that value speaking and listening as much as reading and writing. Philosopher Hannah Arendt described this imperative: “However much we are affected by the things of the world . . . they become human for us only when we discuss them with our fellows. . . . We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in the course of it we learn to be human.” ¹ When students bring their minds, hearts, and consciences to conversations about literature and life, it allows them to broaden their understanding of the text, themselves, and their world. Discussions are richer when students are grappling with questions that matter—questions that are open-ended, intellectually engaging, and transferable to their own lives. 

The following learning experiences support text-based, student-centered discussions. They offer compelling questions that invite students to draw evidence from the text to support their thinking, engage in conversation with their peers, and make real-life connections to what they are reading.

• 1Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1968), 24–25.

Before using this learning experience, please review the following information to help guide your preparation process.

Introduce: Set Personal Goals for a Discussion and Revisit the Classroom Contract

1. Ask students to respond in their journals to the following questions. Let them know that they will be sharing their ideas with a partner. Project or read aloud the following prompts one at a time.
   • Identify a time when you have felt comfortable sharing your ideas and questions in a class. What happened in those moments to help you feel comfortable?
   • Identify a time when you have had ideas or questions but have not shared them. Why not? What was happening in that space?
2. After pairs share, debrief as a class, asking pairs to comment on any patterns or similarities that they noticed. Record these on the board. Then discuss the following question as a class: What can we do as individuals and as a class to make sure that everyone feels comfortable sharing their ideas and asking questions during a discussion?
3. Review your classroom contract, affirming the norms that students have already established and/or modifying the terms as needed. See the Notes to Teacher section for more information about contracting if it is a new concept for you and your students.

Explore: Engage in Small-Group Discussions of a Compelling Question

1. Divide the class into small groups and pass out the Compelling Questions for Literary Analysis and the Keep the Discussion Alive! handouts. If this is the first time your students have used these resources, read the discussion questions out loud together and then choose one question to practice with as a class. Encourage students to use the sentence starters to keep the discussion alive and to support their ideas with evidence from the text. 
2. Then have each student choose a question that they would like to discuss with their group members. Let students know if there are questions that you would like them to discuss as well. Give students a few minutes to gather evidence or identify scenes that help them think about the question they chose. 
3. Have group members choose a facilitator, summarizer, and timekeeper and then read aloud their questions so they can decide on an order. Circulate while groups engage in their conversations, prompting them to support their ideas with the text as needed. At the end of the discussion time, have each group complete the following two sentence stems to help support the summarizer’s presentation: 
   • One important insight or connection that arose during our discussion is . . .
   • One question that arose during our discussion is . . . 
4. Use the questions generated by the groups for a class discussion. Then have students synthesize any new understanding in a short journal entry that explores the following questions: What new, different, or deeper understanding do you have about the text as a result of today’s discussions? What new questions do you have?

Extend: Create a Literary “One-Pager”

1. Have students choose a question from the “Connecting the Text, the World, and Yourself” section of the Compelling Questions for Literary Analysis handout to explore in a “one-pager” writing assignment. ¹ (See examples of student work.) 
2. Explain that for this one-pager, students will explore the question that they chose and represent their thinking on a single page using both language and images. The language can include their own reflective writing, notes from their group discussions, quotations from the text with short analysis, and connections to their own lived experiences. The images can use color, sketches, and/or collage to represent key concepts and ideas. While artistic students tend to gravitate toward these kinds of assignments, it is important to remind students that one-pagers are about deep thinking, not artistic ability. 
3. Model the assignment by sharing your own one-pager. Consider giving students a template with shapes like boxes and circles as an option. 
4. Have students reflect in their journals on the question they chose, responding with their own thinking, ideas from the text, and experiences from their lives. Then have them represent their ideas with language and images on the template or a piece of paper. 

• 1Adapted from Betsy Potash, “A Simple Trick for Success with One-Pagers,” Cult of Pedagogy (blog), May 26, 2019.