In her book Raising Lifelong Learners Lucy Calkins states, “Teachers know the value of talking about books… helping children to have conversations about texts, will help them to have conversations in their minds’ eyes as they read silently. This sort of learning into the story makes for active, powerful reading.”
Powerful reading broadens the mind and makes space for understanding. Students who are able to make connections to motifs, mechanics and structure of stories will be stronger writers. They will be able to have conversations that dig beneath the surface and reveal messages in literature.
“It’s important to talk about the deeper meaning of the story and how it relates to life. We need to talk about how we would feel if the story happened to us. We need to talk in response to books because book can help us to talk in response to our lives. So often in life we learn to guard feelings, to put on a good face. ‘Reading’ Franz Kafka has said, ‘can be the ice ax that breaks the frozen sea within us.’” Writing our stories is wielding the ax which cracks open the depth inside of us.