Grand Conversations, Thoughtful Responses

Faye Brownlie’s (she/her/hers) goal is to build capacity with teachers, co-planning and co-teaching, providing seminars, workshops, and keynote presentations in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia. Passionate about including and supporting all learners, her work focuses on literacy, teaching for thinking, assessment, and inclusion. She has co-authored many books for teachers, including It’s All About Thinking series for Portage & Main Press and most recently, a 2nd edition of Grand Conversations Thoughtful Responses. Faye believes, ‘We know enough, collectively, to teach all our students to read, and more importantly, to create readers who not only can read but want to read."Leyton Schnellert, PhD, (he/his/him) is an associate professor in UBC’s Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy and Eleanor Rix Professor in Rural Teacher Education. He focuses on how teachers and teaching and learners and learning can mindfully embrace student diversity and inclusive education. Dr. Schnellert is the Pedagogy and Participation research cluster lead in UBC’s Institute for Community Engaged Research, inclusive education research lead in the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship, and co-chair of BC’s Rural Education Advisory. His community-based collaborative work contributes a counter argument to top-down approaches that operate from deficit models, instead drawing from communities’ funds of knowledge to build participatory, place-conscious, and culturally responsive practices. Leyton works and learns on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Sinixt who were declared extinct by Canada’s government in 1956 and stands in solidarity with the Sinixt in their reclamation efforts.Leyton has been a middle and secondary years classroom teacher and a learning resource teacher for grades K–12. His books, films, and research articles are widely referenced locally, nationally, and globally.

With this unique approach to literature circles, our students are reading more, are writing more and are excited about talking about their books!  The enthusiasm in the class is contagious with even our more reluctant readers wanting more time – and more books – to read.  It is a pleasure to join a group and participate in the conversation.  Our students’ ability to make deep connections to one and other and to their reading is amazing.

• Foreword Leyton Schnellert viii Preface Faye Brownlie x Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 1 Getting Started: Learning the Say Something Strategy 7 2 The Books 11 3 The Discussion Groups 19 4 Response Journals 25 5 Comprehension Activities 45 6 Classroom Vignettes 83 7 A Culminating Activity: Time for Celebration 117 8 Assessment and Evaluation 123 Appendix A : Literature circles Book Lists 135 Appendix B : Bibliography 147