Grand Conversation

GrandConversation is a reading strategy in which students lead discussion to promotedeeper thinking. The students will read a story and the ask questions, discusstheir feelings, and realize the deeper meaning of the story from differentinteractions with each other (McGee & Parra). There are many differenttools that teachers can use to facilitate student learning with GrandConversation such as literature logs, consensus boards, sketch-to-stretch, anda life lessons chart (McGee & Parra). Grand conversation can also be usedduring scaffolding. Vygostky believed that scaffolding plays an important roleduring language and literacy learning (Wilkinson & Silliman, 2001). Ascaffolding teacher will use grand conversation as an instructional tool foroverlapping different roles as a learner. Selecting a text is one of the mostimportant parts of Grand Conversation. The teacher must select a case deepenough to stimulate dynamic conversation amongst the students. During thelesson, the teacher will also need to model how to begin the conversations. Itis imporatant to keep in mind that teachers are facilitators in GrandConversation, asking questions that stimulate deeper thinking such as “What doyou think the author wants us to think?”, “Are you like any of the characters?In what ways?” (Capacity Building Series, 2011).

Capacity Building Series. (2011, April 1). RetrievedSeptember 30, 2014, from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/cbs_grand_conversations.pdf McGee, I., & Parra, A. (n.d.). Grand Conversations inthe Classroom A Presentationfor the 2009 National Reading Recovery & K‐6 Classroom LiteracyConference. Retrieved September 30, 2014.  Tompkins, G.(2010). Literacy for the 21stCentury: A Balanced Approach. Pearson Education,Inc.  pg. 436 Vinton, V., (2014, April). The Secret to Teaching Poetry:Focusing on Feelings.Retrieved September30, 2014. https://tomakeaprairie.wordpress.com/tag/quotes/   Wilkinson, L.C., &Silliman, E.R. (2001, February). Classroom language and literacy learning. ReadingOnline, 4(7). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.asp?HREF=/articles/handbook/wilkinson/index.html