# data[].attributes.headline
How Fiction Can Help us Better Understand Our Reality

# data[].attributes.subject
How Fiction Can Help us Better Understand Our Reality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Christian Wickert: How fiction can help us better understand our reality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When you work for a corporation, confronted with negotiations and deals, what can fiction teach you? Christian Wickert believes writing fiction can sharpen your perceptions, help you understand others' motivations and ultimately make you better at your job. In this fascinating talk, he explains three ways creative writing improved his business skills and positively impacted his career.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Listen to my interview with Marisa Thompson (transcript):
Sponsored by Peergrade and 3Doodler

Check out information about Marisa Thompson's Ultimate TQE Course at the bottom of this page!

So much of the learning we do comes from texts: articles, textbooks, novels, and all kinds of online publications. Sometimes, those texts come in less traditional forms; in fact, our use of the word "text" has broadened over time to include things like films, images, and even diagrams. Regardless of what form they come in, texts make up the bulk of how our students experience learning.

But too often, when we assign texts to students, we find that they don't experience them with much depth. One reason for that may be that we don't set them up to do that. In many text-based classes (English, history, science), the learning cycle often consists of (1) consuming a section of the text, (2) answering teacher-created questions about the text, (3) taking a test after several sections have been completed.

For years, high school English teacher Marisa Thompson followed this same programming, and got typical results: Some students did the required work, but never seemed particularly invested in the books themselves. Others completed the questions unevenly, sometimes not answering them all, other times copying work from their peers. And when students didn't do the work, they got calls home and office referrals.

As this pattern repeated itself year after year, Thompson became more frustrated: The texts themselves were wonderful, but students weren't experiencing them the way they were meant to be experienced. Instead, they had shallow interactions with them, doing whatever surface work had to be done to get a grade.

Finally, she started experimenting with a different approach, and the way she teaches texts now is completely different from the way she used to. Her current approach, which she calls TQE, is similar to Socratic Seminar, where students lead a discussion on a given text, but with a few twists. Since implementing this new approach, Thompson has seen her students reading much more than they used to, and with much more depth than ever before. They are having college-level conversations about books in class, and for the first time, they seem excited about the books they're reading.

On top of that, Thompson's prepping and grading work for these class sessions is down to almost nothing.

What I love about this method, and why I'm sharing it here, is that I think it could be applied in a lot of different areas, not just with the study of novels. In any class where students need to read a text in order to learn, something along these lines could be implemented, and I think you'll find that the learning in your classroom gets much richer as a result. So as you read about TQE, think about how you might be able to apply it in your content area.

The Problem

As an English teacher, Thompson found that her students were experiencing books in a very shallow, grade-focused way.

"(I would) send students home, maybe get them started on Chapter 1, and then, Hey guys, go home and read Chapter 2. Come on back and we'll talk about it, and here's your list of questions; you're going to have a reading quiz. I realized I wasn't really assessing their reading with homework and quizzes. I was assessing whether or not they did their homework questions."

This method not only diminished the value of the books students were reading, it also led to other problems. "It made reading seem like a hassle," Thomspon says. "I started getting a bunch of cheating. One year I had 10 kids copy off each other. It turned this amazing story-this beautiful novel that everybody should read and enjoy and love-into a discipline problem."

Early Changes

Knowing something had to change, Thompson decided to try grading students only on whether their participation in class indicated that they had read the book.

"I said, 'Look. We're going to read this book, and we're just going to read it and talk about it. You're not going to have study questions. You're not going to have any reading quizzes. But I'm going to know if you read or not. I'm going to know.'"

These early discussions were similar to Socratic Seminar, where students came with questions and Thompson mostly observed. When a student participated in a way that demonstrated that he or she had read the book, their names would be crossed off of a chart. "And that was it," Thompson says. "The standard says, Be able to read and analyze at grade level. And if they're doing that, I mean, yeah, cross their name off. Move on."

For students who scored low on the discussion or who weren't initially comfortable with active participation, Thompson offered alternative means of assessment. "I said, hey, if I'm wrong with your score, then we need to come up with some sort of alternative: They were used to taking annotations, taking notes on their thoughts while they read-you can show me those. You can sit down and have a conversation just one-on-one, or you can take a test. So if you got an eight out of 10, and you're like, 'No, I want the 10 out of 10,' I have a multiple-choice test on the book."

Most of the time, Thompson's initial score on the discussion turned out to be accurate. "I did have a lot of students who had a B for their assessment, and they're like, No, I want the A. Great. And they took the test and then it was cute, because they were like Yeah, I didn't really read all of it. So my assessment was, on average, about 3 or 4 percent higher than what they were normally getting on their tests."

Right away, Thompson started to see changes in how her students were reading. "I had students who started reading more than they were assigned, and they were finishing the book early," she says. Some were even reading ahead.

Over time, Thompson refined her approach, adding small-group time before the large-group discussions, offering scaffolding to help students develop better questions, and structuring student contributions so that the richest questions got the most discussion time.

These changes have so elevated the level of discourse that Thompson sometimes feels like she's teaching college class. "And that's exactly what I tell them: 'What we just did, that was a collegiate literature course. That was amazing. You could walk into a college course and have this discussion.' And you can see that they're enjoying it."

The TQE Method

Here is the approach Thompson uses now, step by step:

1. Students Complete Assigned Reading at Home

Usually, this will be a segment of a longer text, like a few chapters in a novel. Students who show up having not completed the reading are invited to finish up in the hall during small group discussion (step 2) to catch up. They are welcome to return to class for the discussion when they finish.

2. Small Group Discussions (15 minutes)

When they arrive in class, students get into small groups, where they have 15 minutes to share thoughts, lingering questions, and epiphanies (TQEs) they have about the reading. Early in the year, Thompson provides stems to help students generate these (see below), encouraging them to move from the more simplistic ideas on the left to the more complex ones on the right.

3. TQEs on the Board

By the time the 15 minutes is up, each group needs to choose their top 2 TQEs from the group and write them on the board. Although these are meant to serve as the basis for the group discussion, they are not necessarily used as is.

"If they put something on there that is not at the quality or as thought-provoking as we need it to be for the class to discuss, we'll edit it together, the 40 of us," Thompson explains. "So it becomes a writing lesson."

Thompson also insists that when discussing a text, students use the author's name. When discussing Of Mice and Men, for example, she started by having students repeat the name "Steinbeck" five times. "I love Lenny and George. I love Lenny," she told them. "but he's totally fictional. So when you start asking questions like, 'Why did George do that?' George doesn't exist."

Instead, she has students practice asking questions like, "Why did hat theme is Steinbeck have George do that?" "W Steinbeck trying to convey to the rest of us by having his character do that?"

"It's not about the character," she explains. "It's not about the character's motivation, it's the author's purpose in providing that motivation for the character."

4. Class Discussion of TQEs

Thompson then moderates a whole-class discussion of the reading, using the TQEs that have been written on the board. This takes about 40 minutes of class time-she teaches on a block schedule, so there's plenty of time to dig in. When the class is actively studying a novel, they will have these conversations in every class meeting.

As for grading, Thompson simply records when students participate, and that's it. "I have a chart with their little pictures," she explains, "and I cross them off as I go. So I'm not necessarily grading them every single day. My student Sally might have participated a ton one day, and skipped the next day. But my standard-based grading says she is reading and analyzing at at least grade level. I don't need to score each of my 40 kids every single day."

"And the amount of planning is nil," Thompson adds. " I'm not creating, I'm not copying, I'm not collecting, I don't need to waste my time. My prep is reading before bed every night."

What Student-Centered Learning Looks Like

"We have all these really great aphorisms, these quotes about, 'Students should own their learning,' and 'Empower students,'" Thompson observes. "And it's like, well that's great, but how in the heck do we do that?"

Since starting the TQE process, Thompson has seen true student-centered learning in action: Students are in charge of the content of the discussions, and the ability to participate fully has become its own motivator for completing the homework.

"The peer pressure of Everyone's discussing this book- that becomes cool. To have an idea, to have an opinion. So the student comes in, and all of a sudden it's, "Wait, I read that part, and I think this," you know? And you want to talk about empowering a student? You just turned that student into a part of the classroom community." ♦

If you are a fan of the TQE method and you want to take it further, check out Marisa's Ultimate TQE Course. This course will revolutionize your reading and writing instruction and assessment through student-led inquiry, intentional teacher guidance, feedback that is immediately useful to students while eliminating the need for at-home grading, even for essays, and a personable approach to teaching and learning that leaves everyone in the room energized and engaged.

Cult of Pedagogy receives a portion of the Ultimate TQE Course sales that come through the link on this page.

Come back for more.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration that will make your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Over 50,000 teachers have already joined-come on in.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Deeper Class Discussions with the TQE Method

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Want your students to have rich, complex conversations about the texts they read? This method leads to the kinds of classroom discussions you thought only happened in college.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
1:09:55 Guest(s): Amanda Morin, Emily Kircher-Morris

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast | Cult of Pedagogy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teaching strategies, classroom management, education reform, educational technology -- if it has something to do with teaching, we’re talking about it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Poetry Foundation's Learning Lab encourages teachers, students, and learners of every age to immerse themselves in poetry. It includes articles on poetry and about poets, core learning poems, essays on poetic theory and a glossary of poetic terms. The Foundation also has a great list of Learning Resources for teachers and students of poetry.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Understand more, faster. Free!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Daily questions inspired by Times content from across sections. Join the conversation!

# data[].attributes.body
Resources by theme, paired texts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.

World-class content

Access thousands of reading lessons and our comprehensive ELA curriculum, CommonLit 360.

Accessible for all learners

Tailor instruction to students' needs with text-to-speech, translation, and digital note-taking.

Actionable data

Track students' reading performance, set goals, and plan instructional next steps.

CommonLit
Digital Library

Discover thousands of free, supplemental lessons and quizzes in English and Spanish - all featuring great authors.

CommonLit
Assessment Series

Measure growth in reading comprehension with three benchmark assessments when you unlock our premium packages.

CommonLit 360 &
Professional Development

Support a successful rollout of our research-backed ELA curriculum with personalized webinars and on-demand trainings.

"

CommonLit has made a tremendously positive impact on my teaching practice. I'm very proud to teach CommonLit!

Jennifer Lane ELA Teacher

"

CommonLit definitely keeps me organized. It's easy for me to grade and it's easy for me to see students' reading growth increase throughout the year.

"

The CommonLit assessment questions are aligned to our ELA standards, which is extremely helpful when prepping for the state exam.

Teachers trust CommonLit to foster students' reading comprehension

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
CommonLit | Free Online Reading Passages and Literacy Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CommonLit is a comprehensive literacy program with thousands of reading lessons, full-year ELA curriculum, benchmark assessments, and standards-based data for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Project Gutenberg is a library of over 70,000 free eBooks

Choose among free epub and Kindle eBooks, download them or read them online. You will find the world's great literature here, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. Thousands of volunteers digitized and diligently proofread the eBooks, for you to enjoy.

No fee or registration! Everything from Project Gutenberg is gratis, libre, and completely without cost to readers. If you find Project Gutenberg useful, please consider a small donation to help Project Gutenberg digitize more books, maintain its online presence, and improve Project Gutenberg programs and offerings. Other ways to help include digitizing, proofreading and formatting, or reporting errors.

New donation option with Give Freely. More information....

No special apps needed! Project Gutenberg eBooks require no special apps to read, just the regular Web browsers or eBook readers that are included with computers and mobile devices. There have been reports of sites that charge fees for custom apps, or for the same eBooks that are freely available from Project Gutenberg. Some of the apps might have worthwhile features, but none are required to enjoy Project Gutenberg eBooks.

50 years of eBooks 1971-2021. In 2021, Project Gutenberg celebrated the first eBook for reading enjoyment and unlimited free redistribution. This eBook was created on July 4, 1971 by Project Gutenberg's founder, Michael S. Hart. Read more about this lasting innovation. Project Gutenberg is grateful to all volunteers who helped to reach this milestone anniversary. Project Gutenberg offers a vibrant and growing collection of the world's great literature. Read, enjoy, and share!

Find Free eBooks

Audio books

Audio books are a great way to enjoy and share literature. Project Gutenberg no longer adds new audio books to the collection, and suggests these audio book resources. These audio books are all freely available and in the public domain in the US. They may be easily played back on computers, tablets, mobile phones, and other devices. They may be shared non-commercially, without limitation except in countries where the printed source is still copyrighted. All of the sources listed below are digitizations of texts from Project Gutenberg.

Project Gutenberg's human-read audio books. 662 titles read by people, sometimes with sound effects or other enhancements. These are from a few different contributors.

Project Gutenberg's computer-generated audio books. 386 titles from 2003, using text-to-speech automation. These are listenable but relatively low quality compared to today's technology.

Human-read audio books from LibriVox. LibriVox is a volunteer community that produces high-quality performances that are done by many different volunteers. Follow the link to find audio books, and also to help create new audio books.

The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection. Almost 5,000 titles from 2023, via a Project Gutenberg collaboration with Microsoft and MIT. These use neural text-to-speech technology for more natural-sounding computer-generated audio books. These audio books are also available on major music/podcast platforms as well as The Internet Archive. Project Gutenberg and partners were recognized by TIME for this work in their Best Inventions of 2023.

Get Help

How to Help

Distributed Proofreaders welcomes new volunteers. This is the main source of new Project Gutenberg eBooks. Getting started is easy, and just a page a day will help!

Fix and improve Project Gutenberg by reporting errors, bugs, typos, and suggesting changes.

Record audiobooks with our friends at LibriVox.

Special Areas

Terms of Use

Project Gutenberg eBooks may be freely used in the United States because most are not protected by U.S. copyright law. They may not be free of copyright in other countries. Readers outside of the United States must check the copyright terms of their countries before accessing, downloading or redistributing eBooks. We also have a number of copyrighted titles, for which the copyright holder has given permission for unlimited non-commercial worldwide use.

The Project Gutenberg website is for human users only. Use of automated tools to access the website may trigger a block of your access. This site utilizes cookies, captchas and related technologies to help assure the site is maximally available for human users. See full terms of use here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Project Gutenberg is a library of free eBooks.

# data[].attributes.headline
SIFT Analysis as a framework for Artist Journals

# data[].attributes.subject
SIFT Analysis as a framework for Artist Journals

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Freytag's Pyramid / Plot Analysis by Shmoop

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kelly recognizes that part of the reason students struggle with reading is because they lack prior knowledge and background. They can decode the words, but the words remain meaningless without a foundation of knowledge. To help build his students' prior knowledge, he assigns them an Article of the Week every Monday morning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The text below is from the comprehensive classroom resource for instructors that accompanies the textbook edition of the Favorite Poem Project anthology An Invitation to Poetry.

Asking students, as the Favorite Poem Project asks people in general, to read poems aloud and say something personal about them demonstrates that those processes can be joyous rather than intimidating or dry. To recite a poem aloud fulfills a natural need, stimulated by the pleasurable, moving experience of the poem.

There are different approaches to organizing a Favorite Poem reading, but the goal remains the same: autonomous, individual connection with a work of art, and the ability to communicate that connection by speaking the poem in one's own voice and by saying something about it in one's own words.

Favorite Poem readings tend to create an atmosphere of respect and attention, as students listen to their peers share poems that mean something to them. The format for a reading within a single classroom is simple: each student reads a poem and says a few sentences about why this particular poem is important as a personal choice. (Our advice is to rule out written statements or notes: the only piece of paper allowed would be the text of the poem itself.) It may seem risky, but our inclination is to allow all sorts of material such as song lyrics, nursery rhymes, or anything that has found its way into print. If the student chooses to start with the words of a silly song-even in a defiant or teasing spirit-the requirement to say something to one's peers about the importance of the choice can lead to the fulfillment of the educational goal.

For the students' in-class reading, photocopies can be useful, but there is much to be gained from careful listening, with no text to rely on, and for welcoming the idea that a poem or parts of a poem can be heard over again, the way one plays or sings a favorite song more than once.

The anthology assignment (detailed elsewhere in this guide) is good preparation for a Favorite Poem reading, perhaps at the end of the term, with students choosing one poem from their collection to share with the rest of the class. It may be beneficial to have a Favorite Poem reading early in the term, and then again toward the end, with students choosing a different poem each time. Perhaps their tastes or interests will have changed over the course of the semester. Another option would be to begin each class with one or two students presenting a favorite poem.

A more ambitious step, beyond an in-class Favorite Poem reading, would be to organize an evening event inviting others from the university community to participate-several students, the high school principal or university president, custodial staff, administrators, professors of various subjects, maybe a coach. Another approach would be to extend the reach even further, finding readers from the broader community, the city or town-a mayor or alderman, a grade school student, a radio or TV personality, a doctor or banker or librarian. Students might get involved in tracking down readers and helping put together such an event. Many schools, colleges, and universities have presented events of this kind with wonderful results.

By involving the school community, or reaching out to the broader community, a Favorite Poem reading can help build important ties between a school and the community that supports or contains the school. For more information about planning an event that involves the community, visit favoritepoem.org/getinvolved.html. These readings demonstrate that poetry is part of life as well as an object for study. They create the opportunity to learn something more about poetry from people who take pleasure in it-not only or primarily scholars or poets, but anyone who loves a poem.

Robert Pinsky and Maggie Dietz

Below are additional, specific ideas for a variety of school events, designed by teachers who've written to us about their successes:

The poetry institute was a reaffirmation of why I love poetry as well as a reminder of why I became a teacher. I aim to spark the same kind of love for poetry in others. I believe this week-long institute has given me the tools to do just that! Thank you!
-Tamara Dalton, Needham High School, Needham, MA

The level of excitement generated by bringing the Favorite Poem Project to my classroom is astounding.
-Virginia Dent, Lansing High School, Lansing, NY

The Favorite Poem Project videos provoke interest and conversation among students and are wonderfully helpful as an introduction to poetry.
-Frannie Moyer, Newton South High School, Newton, MA

The Favorite Poem Project seeks to improve poetry's place in American classrooms by encouraging active, engaging poetry lessons that emphasize a direct, vocal connection to poems. The lessons below were developed by teachers as part of their participation in the Favorite Poem Project summer poetry institutes hosted by Boston University.

In keeping with the goals of the Favorite Poem Project, the lessons presented here focus on appreciating poetry-reading, discussing, and enjoying poems-rather than on the writing of original poetry. Several of the lessons emphasize pleasure in the words and sounds of poems as place to begin-reminding students that poetry is art, and that it is satisfying and exciting to discover a poem that enthralls you and to say it in your own voice. If poetry is first presented in classrooms as something to seek out and enjoy, rather than something to pick apart, label and decipher, students are more likely to become interested in developing a deeper understanding of meaning in poems, in looking more closely at forms, in learning the tools poets use and the terms that identify those tools.

Many of these lessons make use of the Favorite Poem Project video segments. The videos are available for viewing on this Web site, or may be purchased on DVD with the anthology An Invitation to Poetry. The book/DVD set is also available in a paperback textbook edition for use in high school and introductory college courses. A comprehensive classroom guide written by Robert Pinsky, Maggie Dietz, Todd Hearon and Jill McDonough is available to instructors who adopt the text for a course.

Though the lessons below are organized by grade level, many of them could easily be adapted for students in higher or lower grades.

The Art of Poetry Video Repository is a portal to the video mini-lectures and discussions from The Art of Poetry, Robert Pinsky's edX/Boston University MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). The lecture segments, usually five minutes in length or less, are on such topics as Music and Poetry; Teasing, Flirting, and Courting; Kidding and Tribute; and Difficulty and Pleasure. The discussion segments, also quite brief, take up those topics and others, with Robert Pinsky moderating and commenting. The people participating in the discussions include non-students (for instance, a landscaper, an engineer) as well as students in high school, college, and graduate school. The videos are meant to address the needs and interests of teachers, students, and anyone interested in the art of poetry.

Poetry, deeply rooted in human culture, is intricately connected to many disciplines, such as visual art, music, history and religious and social studies. The Favorite Poem Project shows a great deal in particular about American culture at the end of the twentieth century-through the poems people choose, which span ages and cultures, and through the stories they tell, which are often connected to other art forms, social and cultural questions, and other aspects of contemporary life.

Teachers have found many ways to incorporate poetry into areas of studies other than Language Arts. Below are some of their ideas, including many which make us use of specific Favorite Poem video segments.

History Through Poetry

Liz Stinger, a teacher of mechanical drafting/CADD at Mount Joy Career and Technology Center wrote to us about her daughter's success in combining two disciplines in one paper:

I learned to love and appreciate poetry from an exceptional high school English teacher. I have never missed an opportunity to use poetry in everyday life.

This "lesson" gave my daughter an appreciation for poetry and earned her an "A" by combining a literature and a history assignment during her senior year in high school. Her English assignment was to select a topic and develop a research paper. Her history assignment was to write a paper on World War I. With both teachers' permission, she selected the weapons of WWI as her topic and used the poetry of WWI, along with other resources, to develop the paper. The poetry helped the information become alive. The names of the weapons and the words used in describing them, their sounds, gave a dimension to the research that factual prose could not. She titled the paper "The Weapons of WWI through Its Poetry."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The text below is from the comprehensive classroom resource for instructors that accompanies the textbook edition of the Favorite Poem Project anthology An Invitation to Poetry. Asking students, as the Favorite Poem Project asks people in general, to read poems aloud and say something personal about them demonstrates that those processes can be joyous rather than intimidating or dry.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.