{"id":1536,"date":"2025-10-29T16:06:48","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T20:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/?p=1536"},"modified":"2025-10-29T16:06:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T20:06:48","slug":"reading-for-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/teaching\/reading-for-discussion\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading for Discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/newsletter\/teaching\/2025-10-16\">Full article available on the Teaching newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sherry Linkon, a professor of English and American studies at Georgetown University, described an approach she developed years ago, after students told her that when they struggle with a text, they often rely on class discussions to clarify their confusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Linkon created what she calls a&nbsp;<strong>framing document<\/strong>, a low-pressure, ungraded approach to encourage students to consider what questions the reading raises for them. \u201cStudents have regularly told me this is one of their favorite assignments,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She asks students to respond to four questions about the reading and submit them in advance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>What do you find most interesting about this text?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>How does it connect with other things we\u2019ve read?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What questions should we ask about it?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>How should we approach those questions? In particular, how could we use the text itself to begin to dig into your questions?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This strategy works for a few reasons. One is that only a few students are asked to do it in any given week, which makes the assignment manageable for her to review. (Linkon teaches two courses a semester but says this strategy worked when she had a heavier teaching load.) Another is that asking students in advance what they find interesting and what questions they have helps her shape the class discussion and makes it more student-centered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Linkon has used variations of this strategy in a range of courses, including first-year courses and master\u2019s-level seminars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYes, some students will still copy from sources or get help from AI. I\u2019m not sure anything I can do will stop that entirely,\u201d she wrote. \u201cBut making this mostly about what they\u2019re interested in seems to motivate a lot of them, and it helps them learn how to begin to approach a new text on their own. I get very positive feedback from students on this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Full article available on the Teaching newsletter. Sherry Linkon, a professor of English and American studies at Georgetown University, described an approach she developed years ago, after students told her that when they struggle with a text, they often rely on class discussions to clarify their confusion. Linkon created what she calls a&nbsp;framing document, a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kathryn Byrnes","author_link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/author\/kbyrnes\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}