Literature discussion help?

[lgliser]

I loved the recent post about literature falling through the cracks. It does here too and I was encouraged by all the people saying that they don't do a lot of formal lit until middle or high school. 

 

We do read good books - I try to follow lists from places like TWTM or Veritas Press or a friend who teaches at a classical private school. 

 

So books do get read, and I love the idea of just talking about them together like a book club, or something less formal than that even. But I am SO not good at things like that. I'm not great at book clubs myself. I love to read but I don't usually have a lot to say other than "it was really good/funny/sad...." so shallow! 

 

I guess that's why I am always at least thinking about getting lit guides. I do feel like it would still be something that falls through the cracks but at least we'd have guidance.

 

Does anyone else have trouble just talking about books? Any advice? Because that's what I really want to do. Just have a little conversation.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I highly recommend the Teaching the Classics DVD seminar.  So, so good.  Once you've listened to it, good discussions will come a lot more easily.  

 

The guide that goes along with the DVD has about 10 pages in the back full of deeper questions you can ask to engage in discussion.  

 

If you can really integrate the information by watching the DVD a few times and reading through the questions a few times, you'll be able to have pretty spontaneous conversation about books- waiting in line, making dinner, etc, and having a really good chat about the book.  

 

 

[Bluegoat]

Hmm, this is an interesting question.

 

These days, I don't find that I do have trouble talking about books.  But that is mostly because I have been in groups or classes in the past that talked about them in a substantial way.  I know back in high school, I had a really hard time even thinking about the right questions.

 

My feeling is that once you get started thinking about books in that way, it becomes pretty easy to carry on doing so.  So, something like the program Monica suggested would be great.

 

The most perfect answer would probably be a good literature class or a book group that has some real heft - the latter seems tricky to find, though.  But something where you can be inspired by the comments of the teacher, if not y the other students.  The trouble I find with book groups is, if there is no leader or person who can take the lead, they often fall flat.

[nixpix5]

I highly recommend the Teaching the Classics DVD seminar. So, so good. Once you've listened to it, good discussions will come a lot more easily.

 

The guide that goes along with the DVD has about 10 pages in the back full of deeper questions you can ask to engage in discussion.

 

If you can really integrate the information by watching the DVD a few times and reading through the questions a few times, you'll be able to have pretty spontaneous conversation about books- waiting in line, making dinner, etc, and having a really good chat about the book.

I second this. The lectures are broken up into topics and he teaches the components of a story and then walks you through how to teach and discuss them. In the book they also have lists of age appropriate books for various grades. It can be used across all grade levels which makes it something you can use through all of your child's education.

[PeterPan]

Maybe it's more of an overall conversation issue than a lit thing... I got these to try with my ds. Amazon.com: Loaded Questions Junior card game: Toys & Games  There are tons of things like that, just conversation starters. You can also do games like PicWits and captioning games. Then, when you have conversation like that in general going, it's more natural to say hey what did you think of that book, what was the funniest thing in the book, what scared you about the book, what surprised you, what was the biggest problem in the book, how did he solve it, what did he learn, etc... 

 

Some people are internally reflective about their literature, so working on conversation as a whole loosens them up to let come out what's already inside.

 

Also, your kids are at an age where the How to Report on Books series is good. They give you really concrete things to discuss. I also used to google for lit guides to use with my dd. So we did the Hobbit and just googled for a free lit guide, did Shakespeare and googled for guides, etc. But really, sometimes guides are overkill for some kids. Is your goal to dissect or enjoy? For us, the guides weren't improving comprehension (which on her was already high) and weren't increasing enjoyment/engagement. The real issue was we just needed to TALK about it, that getting your thoughts into words is hard. So any simple prompt was enough. 

 

Around that age, iirc, I printed off the story diagramming (you know, setting, rising action, denoument, climax, blah blah) and would have her fill that out in her notebook for every book narration. So she was required to do x number of book narrations a week, written, and she was filling that out in the journal. Pretty journals, you know how girls are. Anyways, once she had done that, she had thought enough ahead that she could talk about the books.

 

See that's the other thing. Some people need time to process, so reading and then handing them a guide can be really rushed and put people on the spot. With my dd's ADHD, having the discussion questions ahead was actually an accommodation from the psych. Her processing speed is low, and she really needs that time to think! So if she has the questions ahead, she can think and be ready to discuss.

[KeriJ]

Check out The Reader's Odyssey. It was really helpful for me in understanding a more natural way to do literature.