First Harkness Discussion, 11/3/17

In class today we had our first group discussion about chapter one of The Great Gatsby. We used our pre-writing document to bring up points in our discussion that helped each group answer the question they chose. My group chose to answer question C, which was "How does this novel show Romanticism and Modernism? What is Fitzgerald's tone about that?".  Since my group consisted of Ronan, Catherine, Logan, Sean, Jhordin, and Chris, there was a lot of arguing. We used sheets to track our conversation by drawing lines from one speaker to another and writing letters next to names indicating who used textual evidence or who spoke out of turn.  A lot of our discussion focused on that paper and giving everyone good marks or bad marks, so we got a bit sidetracked. When we were on task, Sean and Logan led most of the conversation with everyone else adding in when they could. By the end of the discussion we were able to answer most of our question and I was able to absorb a good amount of information about the first chapter. Our class connected to the real world today in a great way. A lot of times in real life there will be discussions like the harkness we had today. For example, politics is a great example of a real life discussion where tactics like what we used for our harkness discussion would be used. Another smaller-level example would be in a book chat. Both of these examples require the use of evidence for claims and to interact with peers while listening and understanding what they have to say. Having harkness discussions is a great way to prepare students for similar situations in their adult lives.