The Harkness Method

I learned about Harkness, a student-centered discussion method, at the Exeter Humanities institute after my first year of teaching. I've been using it, presenting on it, and writing about it ever since. My students run their own discussions and analyze their own productivity using observation charts, and I find they listen very carefully to each other's advice about how to improve. I've met with some difficult sections over the years, but each of my classes has eventually learned to share the floor as equally as possible, to brainstorm discussion questions worth asking, to balance text and commentary, and to stay on track. It's fun to see them go from that initial panic of long awkward pauses when they start out to confident leadership at the end of the year.

Often the best discussions come after interesting warm-up activities. Here are a few of my favorites, which I often share in my presentations to others about Harkness.

Discussion Sparks

1. Partners act out a 20 second version of the reading for the group, illustrating just one or two moments they see as most vital.

2. Share Around: each person in the class responds to a question, reads a favorite sentence, etc.

3. Graffiti representation: students create pieces of artistic graffiti that represent an aspect of the text and we view them gallery-style before beginning our discussion.

4. Silent discussion: everyone writes a question and then passes it to the left. Each student writes a response and then passes it on to continue the silent discussion. After ten minutes they return the papers to their original owner and someone whose question prompted a lot of good thinking opens the discussion.

5. Question Hat Exchange: students put one question in. Everyone takes someone else’s out to ask during discussion.

6. Students choose a song that best fits the reading to add to the book’s soundtrack, briefly explaining their choice and the connection in writing or to a partner before discussion begins.

7. Students prepare as if to report “live at the scene” at some crucial moment in the previous night's reading. Several volunteers make their report to the class.

8. Students illuminate a passage they see as vital to the text, either with annotations or by drawing it out and emphasizing important words or phrases with different colors.