In such a discussion, students' own insights lead them to a broader awareness of which passages and words seem to matter most and how they can be understood. Examine significant words . Good literature invests words with meanings they might not carry in ordinary discourse. The Junior Great Books Curriculum asks students to consider the range of possible meanings of a significant word, phrase, or group of words and to look back into the story to see these meanings in context. After doing their own thinking, students shared and supported ideas, assisted by their teacher's open-ended questioning.
Brief discussions allow students to test their ideas and broaden their sense of possible meanings.
A brief evaluative discussion before reading helps students consider that a basic concept in the story can be approached from different angles. These questions prepare them to see how incidents in the story convey the ugly duckling's problem of identity. After students build their own interpretations in discussion, they reflect through writing on how their interpretation of the story's meaning connects with their personal experience and values. Assessing students' interpretive ability presented difficulties. Discussion as a performance is problem-centered and spontaneous, unlikely to degenerate into recitation.