Good Experiences With Literacy

One of the most prominent memories about a good experience with literacy was my junior year of highschool in my AP English class. A few times a week, we would have class discussions about the current novel we were reading. Ou teacher did her best to encourage the entire class to participate and fully engage themselves in the discussion by making observations for the rest of the class, or posting a question concerning the book that would further open up the doors for discussion. However, as much as a teacher wishes for the best, when it comes to everyone equally participating, we had a good number of people that would not engage at all, and there were two or three students that would speak out at any chance they could, just to hear themselves talk. So, one day during a class discussion, our teacher had us organize our desks into a huge circle where we all felt included. she then handed us each 4 cards, each a different color. each colored card, began with a different "conversation starter". For example, one said, " I feel.."
another said " I have a question about..." and so on. Everytime someone rose their hand to talk, they would place a card face down. We had to place at least 3 cards down by the end of the class discussion, but we were also directed to use these cards wisely (for the students that dominated the class discussions) and we were graded on how many cards we actually used. This helped alot of people come out of their comfort zone and led to a fully-engaged class discussion. This particular memory is meaningful to me because I was one of the students who hardly spoke up, and this was a friendly push for me participate. After I starting participating more, I felt completely absorbed in the material and began to enjoy learning. This event is significant today, because I still find myself struggling to speak up in class discussions more, and I always think back to those 4 colored cards with a starting point on each one.