… this is something many of you struggle with. When I ask for thoughtful reflection, what I am looking for is evidence of your thinking on paper (or in a blog). It’s not about listing what you did or proving to me that you were working during our lit circle discussions (which is what prompted this post): it’s about taking the ideas that you’ve explored with your group and going further with them. Make new connections, explore ideas that still puzzle you, wonder about the author’s motivation in writing this … show me that you are engaging with the book.

I am seeing a lot of “reflections” that look like this:

Today in our lit circle we talked about how in Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie, the author starts the story full of suspense, making it seem like the main character and his friends are going on this huge adventure when really they’re just going to high school. We also wondered what was going on with Scott’s parents – Scott is the main character. One person in my group pointed out that it seemed like they were being kind of weirdly excessive in their emotions. Everyone did their job, so it was a good discussion. We all had things to say about the main character and his friends, and it was especially interesting considering it wasn’t that long ago that we were entering high school. I didn’t know that in the United States they didn’t start high school until grade nine.

There are several problems with that reflection.

• No actual ideas are shared, only the topics that were discussed.
• The writer is talking about what other people said, but not about what he or she thinks.
• There are a lot of vague comments – “good discussion,” “it was interesting.”

A better example from the same first chapter of Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie would be as follows:

The book Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie seems very suspenseful when it begins, with the characters suggesting that whatever it is that they are doing the next day will be like Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones. It seems weird when you realize later that they’re just going to high school – except when I remember my grade seven year – and the summer that followed it – I remember being really freaked out about high school. I mean, you hear stories about kids getting shoved in garbage cans and not being allowed to sit at tables in the cafeteria, and you realize that you’re going from a school where you know everyone to one where you’ll know a tiny fraction of the people there. In that sense … yeah, it might be a little like a terrifying adventure. I mean, some of those mean girls that you hear about could totally be compared to monkeys eating your heart out.

In my group, we also talked about what is going on with Scott’s parents – Scott’s the main character. One person in my group pointed out that it seemed like they were being weirdly excessive in their emotions. I can see what he was saying: when you look back at the text you see things like the fact that they were in front of the TV “but it didn’t look like they were watching it” and they stopped talking when Scott walked in – and then the author describes his mom as smiling “with way more joy than the situation seemed to call for.” That’s on pages five and six. There’s clearly something going on there. Scott seems to think it’s just because his brother was such a problem in high school, but I think there’s something else. It’s like there’s something they feel they should tell him but don’t want to bring up as well. I hope no one is dying or seriously ill. I hate those books! (This is why I no longer read John Green.)

Notice how the second example – besides being longer – also includes a lot more thoughts from the person writing it? The writer makes connections to her life, makes hypotheses that she then supports with examples from the book, explains her ideas … all things that should be done in a thoughtful reflection.

If you’re still struggling with what to write for your lit circle reflections, use some of the following prompts:

• What was the most important part of this section of the book and why?
• What connections can you make to your life, or to history/another text/other parts of the book? Explain your connections.
• What do you think is going to happen next? What in the book makes you think this will happen?
• What ideas did your group members share that you hadn’t thought of before? What do you think of those ideas now?
• What ideas did your group members share that you disagree with? Why do you disagree with them?
• What do you think the theme of the book is now? Support your thoughts with evidence from the book
• What did this section of the book make you feel? Explain.
• What questions do you still have? What do you think might be the answers to those questions?