Students need to be able to be able to support or refute an argument or literary commentary by someone else. Often students feel that if someone wrote it, it must be correct. They don’t think to see if they agree with the argument if a credible person wrote it. The They Say I Say Chart helps combat this tendency to take second-hand information as rote. Students will have already read Elizabeth Bishop’s “At the Fishhouses” and Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck.” They will have also compared these two poems already.
A. The class will read together Roger Gilbert’s “Comparing Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘At the Fishhouses’ and Adrienne Rich’s ‘Diving into the Wreck.’”
B. Students will underline or highlight Gilbert’s main points in his argument.
C. Students will then underline or highlight their main points in their own comparison.
D. Students will then create a They Say I Say T Chart comparing what Gilbert says with what they say.
They SayI Say
E. The class will then share their charts with each other, discussing their arguments vs. Gilbert’s.
(chart available in print form)