Grading is the bane of my existence as a middle school English teacher. I have realized that my colleagues in the English department and I seem to spend a great deal of our time, on the job and at home, grading essays and various other written assignments. After six years of teaching, I still have not found a way to run an essay through the Scantron machine, though I have become a rather efficient grader through skillful speed reading and judicious use of my editing pen .

The Inquiry Project attracted my attention with its focus on content rather than conquest. Regardless of all the time and tears I spend grading my students’ essays, they flip through my comments and pen marks looking for a single letter–A, B, C, D, or F. The eleven tasks required to pass the Inquiry Project help focus a student’s attention on the benefit of a final course project, rather than the completion of yet another mind-numbing research paper. Though the breadth of the Inquiry Project does not seem fitting for the middle school student, I believe a well-planned Literature Circle could mirror the reading and writing skills gained in the college-level Inquiry Project.

My eighth-graders and I have just complete our first adventure through the land of Literature Circles. Like the Inquiry Project, all novels chosen for my Literature Circle project contained the analogous theme of race and culture; and like the Inquiry Project, my primary focus of Literature Circles was to refine my students’ questioning processes. I wanted my students to question how each novel portrayed its characters dealing with issue regarding race and culture in America. My students were paired with classmates who chose to read the same novel, and this became their Literature Circle group. Though they had assignments to complete as a group, they were also given time to discuss points of interest and confusion they discovered throughout the reading process. Instead of making each group complete a final project, all students participated in a Socratic Seminar concerning race and culture. A Socratic Seminar combines oral language skills and close-text reading, as well as personal opinion reflections (something all students, regardless of age, enjoy relating). When I informed my students that this “oral test” counted as their final Literature Circle exam, I was bombarded with question about how I would assess their grade. Because of the academic focus on making the grade, my students could not fathom the idea that their intelligent and thoughtful oral responses were of value “grade-wise.”

The Inquiry Project provides a cultural shift in assessment that benefits all levels of education, from pre-elementary to post-graduate. When students focus on the quality of their thoughts, rather than the quantitative value of their questioning, real learning takes place. After receiving their Socratic Seminar “grades,” my students are clamoring for more Literature Circle-style assessments.

Jennifer Carter-Wharton