1. ✨ Welcome & Warm Up

For all cohorts (whether 3, 4, 6, or 8 weeks), the Middle Sessions will be focused having a full hour and a half of rich dialogue.

After a brief activity to warm us up, and a quick overview of our Group Agreements, the Instructor will ask the Opening Question, and we’ll dive right into the text.

2. 💬 Recall & Discussion

These Middle Sessions will focus on deepening our ability to work collectively together to close-read the text and authentically express our thoughts and ideas.

1. Recall: We’ll practice another round of Recall, sharing words, phrases, ideas, questions, and moments that we remember off the top of our minds — without the need to layer on interpretation. 

2. Opening Question: The Instructor will bring a well-designed, open-ended question to guide us into a dialogue, but as a reminder, answering it is never the end-all be-all.

3. Discussion: We will work together to transition between passages, moving forward and backward, and noticing where our challenges and unanswered questions remain. The goal is that everyone will have the chance to contribute and direct the group discussion, and to strengthen each student’s sense of how to navigate the text.

3. 🌀 Summarize

In the final 10 minutes of each session, we will summarize what we’ve discussed. Again, this is a moment where the instructor will invite each student to contribute a thought. We will build metacognitive awareness—awareness of our thinking processes—without any  judgement, on our individual and collective process and contribution. 

4. 📝 Closing Prompt

The instructor will offer three well-designed prompts based on the age/cohort type and the content of that session’s reading: 

1. An academic writing prompt (e.g., a research essay).

2. A creative writing prompt (e.g., a persona poem or a text-to-life essay).

3. A research activity prompt (e.g. dig up more on the origins of words, texts, ideas, and key concepts we explored).

Students are encouraged to continue the conversation in the Circle space.

5. 🌞 Looking Ahead to the Final Session

We will always finish reading the primary text in the penultimate session of the cohort (whether that is week 2, 3, 5, or 7). 

When we reach this second-to-final session, the Instructor will provide guidance on how to approach the Final Session’s reading assignment, in which we will bring text into conversation with art!