Teachers carefully examine their students’ writing to determine the student’s achievement of
selected objectives, reflect on the effectiveness of their teaching, and inform subsequent instruction.
They involve students in reviewing their work, and for EL students, teachers also use the CA ELD
Standards to guide their analysis of student writing and to inform the type of feedback they provide to
students.
Discussing
In grades eleven and twelve students are expected to engage in discussions in which they
synthesize comments, claims, and evidence made on all sides of an issue. They resolve contradictions
and determine what additional information is needed to deepen the investigation. At this point in high
school, students are able to manage the conversational flow of discussions independently; the teacher
offers strategic guidance to move the discussion to the synthesis and to ensure that divergent and
creative perspectives are heard. In the following snapshot students discuss the novel Invisible Man,
turning to the text to resolve contradictions. The snapshot is placed in this section of the chapter
because it presents a discussion; however, it relates to several other themes as well.
Snapshot 7.8. Invisible Man: Cultivating Conversations About Literature
ELA in Grade TwelveThe students in Ms. Oliver’s twelfth-grade literature class are reading Ralph Ellison’s 1952
novel Invisible Man. Ms. Oliver’s goals are for students to understand the art, craft, and
varied purposes of literature. She wants to help them recognize and discuss literary themes,
conceptualize literature as commentary, attend to the narrative voice and its relationship to
the authorial voice, and participate in literary inquiry by making evidence-based inferences and
interpretations. For homework, the students have read an article conceptualizing six aspects
of alienation. In small expert groups, each assigned a different chapter of the novel, students
are now discussing quotes from their chapter that illustrate concepts about alienation reflected
in the narrator’s behavior, actions, or change over time. Students in expert groups are also
generating questions to use when they reassemble in new jigsaw groups, in which each
member of the new group will be an expert on the chapter they discussed at length in their
original group, leading the discussion of the chapter they know well.
In the following excerpt from one group’s discussion of chapter eight of the novel, the
students are participating in a disciplinary discourse community that reads and discusses
literature, cites evidence, incorporates ideas such as alienation and individual responsibility,
considers theme and character development, and explores various functions of the novel, such
as how it serves as social and cultural commentary and offers lessons to live by.
Steve: On page 164, a quarter of the way down, “Of course you couldn’t speak that
way in the South. The white folks wouldn’t like it, and the Negroes would
say that you were putting on. But here in the North I would slough off my
southern ways of speech. Indeed, I would have one way of speaking in
the North and another in the South.” So this goes into like how he changes
himself, to put it in terms of the article, he socially and culturally estranges
himself and is thus alienated. ‘Cause he changes his speech.
Christopher: It’s like he is culturally estranged.
Julia: And socially.
Christopher: He’s pretty smart, I think. His like language and stuff.
Julia: He’s not unintelligent.778 | Chapter 7 Grades 11 and 12