Community Conventions Lists
Students who develop an awareness of the conventions of a literary form or a non-literary text type will become better readers. They will be able to scour a text for meaning as portrayed through not only its content but also its form, which is a useful skill for unseen commentary-style exams. They can begin to better appreciate the relationship between text type, target audience, purpose, and context. Their conversations about authorial choices can become more nuanced, as they will know if an author is following or breaking convention, and they can begin to consider the reasons for that. While this activity is a great starting place, some students may fall into the trap of merely identifying conventions without elaborating how authors have used specific choices for effect beyond generalities like “Imagery makes the reader picture what is going on inside their head.” These lists must be accompanied by other activities or protocols that encourage students to elaborate with specificity on the effect of authorial choices.
Process
- As you interact with a new literary or non-literary form, start a new list (digital or on the wall!) that students have easy access to. Students can also make their own lists in analog or digital notebooks.
- Give the students ownership by allowing one of them to be the scribe, noting down the conventions you are recognizing within this new form.
- The second time you interact with the same text type, or as you work through it the first time if it is longer in nature, add more and more to the list!
- See where students want to take these lists. Perhaps they include definitions of terminology, examples from texts you’ve read in class, caveats to the “rules,” a timeline mapping how the text type or genre has developed over time after looking at multiple texts of the same type, etc. These can and should be messy, living documents that show student thinking.
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