Discussion Questions to Draw the Moral From a Story

A story does not hand its moral to every pupil. Some remember the events and miss the point. Others find a point you did not expect. The questions you ask after the reading decide whether you find out. This article gives a six-step ladder of questions, a bank of stems with simpler versions for A1 and A2 pupils, and one story worked through in full. It also reports what research found about explanation, classroom discussion and wait time.

What questions should you ask about a story?

Ask six kinds of question, in a fixed order, that lead from what happened to what it means. Each step gives the pupil something to stand on for the next. The pupil names the moral at step five, once the reasons and the results are on the table.

1. What happened? 'What did the character do?' This fixes the events.
2. Why did the character do it? 'Why did she tell the teacher?' The story may not state the reason.
3. What else could they have done? 'What else could she do?' The character had a choice.
4. What happened because of it? 'What happened after she told the truth?' The choice had a result.
5. What does the story show? 'This story shows that ...' The pupil puts the lesson into words.
6. Where have you seen this? 'When is this hard to do at school?' The lesson enters the pupil's world.

Steps three and four are where the moral is built, because a moral depends on a choice and on what came of it. Step five only asks the pupil to say it.

Do children find the moral on their own?

Often they do not. Narvaez (2002) reviewed the research and challenged the belief that children build moral literacy by reading or hearing moral stories. One of her four points is that children do not extract the theme of a moral story as the writer intended.

Narvaez, Gleason, Mitchell and Bentley (1999) tested the idea. Pupils in third and fifth grade, and university students, read several moral stories. They chose each story's theme from a list of messages, and chose which of four short vignettes had the same theme. Understanding of the moral theme differed between the age groups, even after the researchers accounted for reading comprehension.

So following the plot and grasping the moral are not the same thing. That is our reading of the study.

Asking pupils to explain helps

Walker and Lombrozo (2017) worked with children aged 5 and 6. They note that young children tend to hold a story at a concrete level, by its surface features. In two experiments, children who were prompted to explain parts of a story did better than a control group. They were better able to abstract the moral and apply it to new contexts. In some cases, producing an explanation worked better than being told the moral.

Treat this with care. The children were younger than most pupils who read graded stories, and the study was not about foreign-language learners. We found no study that tested these questions with EFL pupils. Still, the direction is clear: ask why before you tell. The pillar guide weighs the wider evidence.

A bank of question stems for each step

The stems below work with any story that turns on a character's choice. The right-hand column gives the same step in simpler English.

Steps three and four are the hardest to ask in simple English, because 'could have done' and 'would have happened' are difficult forms at A1 or A2. The simpler column uses 'can' and 'next' instead.

The ladder lines up with question types that language teachers already use. Day and Park (2005) describe six types of comprehension: literal, reorganisation, inference, prediction, evaluation and personal response. By our mapping, step one is literal, step two is inference, step five is closest to evaluation and step six is a personal response. Reading Comprehension Question Types, With Examples shows each type on one short story.

One story, the full ladder

The outline below is original, and you may use it in class.

Step two has a hook in it: nobody knew, so why speak? Step three puts the other choice into the pupils' mouths, not yours. The three answers at step five all differ, yet the story supports each one.

What kinds of classroom talk improve comprehension?

Murphy, Wilkinson, Soter, Hennessey and Alexander (2009) pooled the empirical studies of classroom discussion about texts in a meta-analysis. Their abstract reports the following:

• Several discussion approaches produced strong increases in pupil talk, with matching falls in teacher talk, and substantial improvements in text comprehension.
• Few approaches were effective at increasing pupils' literal or inferential comprehension and their critical thinking and reasoning.
• Effects varied with the design of the study, the kind of outcome measured and the pupils' academic ability.
• The age range across the studies was wide, but most were done with pupils in fourth to sixth grade.

Read this with its limits. These were studies of discussion about texts in general, not about moral stories. The abstract does not say how many of the pupils were reading in a foreign language.

Our reading for the story lesson: getting pupils to talk is not the aim in itself. The talk has to stay on the text and ask for reasons. One follow-up does most of that work: 'Which part of the story shows that?'

How to run the discussion: wait, pair, then class

Wait three seconds, twice

Rowe (1986) reviewed the research on wait time. Teachers typically wait less than one second for an answer after they ask a question. After a pupil stops speaking, they react or ask the next question in less than one second too. When teachers lengthen both pauses to three seconds or more, Rowe reports pronounced changes in pupils' use of language and logic. She adds that these are usually regarded as improvements.

A pupil who answers in a foreign language has to find the idea and then the English for it. So treat three seconds as a minimum. That is our reasoning, not a finding of Rowe's review.

Pairs first, then the whole class

Give pairs a minute on the harder steps before you take answers. Each pupil tries the sentence with a partner before saying it to the room, so the quiet pupils have an answer ready. This is classroom practice, not a tested finding.

• Ask steps one and two to the whole class. They settle the facts.
• Give steps three and four to pairs. Ask each pair to agree on one answer.
• Have each pupil write step five alone, in one sentence. Then put three or four of the sentences on the board.
• Finish with step six in pairs. Do not ask anyone to share a private story with the class.

What if a pupil names a different lesson?

It will happen, and it is not a failure. Narvaez (2002) points out that readers differ in reading skill and background knowledge, so they do not understand a text in the same way. A story can also support more than one lesson. In the example above, 'tell the truth' and 'one person should not do a job alone' are both in the story.

Give the class one rule at the start. There can be more than one good answer, but every answer needs a reason from the story. Then, when a pupil's lesson surprises you:

• Ask for the evidence. 'Which part of the story shows that?' is a fair question for every answer, including the one you expected.
• If the story supports it, accept it. Write it on the board beside the others.
• If the story does not support it, go back down the ladder. Ask again what happened because of the choice. Do not announce the right moral over the pupil's head.
• If the lesson troubles you, stay curious. Ask what would happen next, and let other pupils answer.

Narvaez (2002) also reports that readers whose moral thinking differs understand, and distort, moral texts in different ways. That is a reason to ask for evidence, not to grade the moral. If you need a mark, mark the English.

For the language side of these lessons, see Teaching Values in the EFL Classroom. A pupil's own sentence is also worth sending home, as How to Share Values Learning With Parents explains.

How iRead handles this

In iRead, stories carry a moral, such as honesty, kindness, courage or perseverance. A quiz runs after every session, with questions generated from the story itself, including its plot and its moral. Dedicated questions ask what the story taught. Every story and quiz is levelled to the CEFR.

Key takeaway

Six questions, asked in order, take a pupil from what happened to what it means. Wait, let pairs talk first, and accept any lesson the story supports.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Narvaez, D. (2002). Does reading moral stories build character?. Educational Psychology Review, 14(2), 155-171. doi.org/10.1023/A:1014674621501
2. Narvaez, D., Gleason, T., Mitchell, C., & Bentley, J. (1999). Moral theme comprehension in children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(3), 477-487. doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.91.3.477
3. Walker, C. M., & Lombrozo, T. (2017). Explaining the moral of the story. Cognition, 167, 266-281. doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2016.11.007
4. Murphy, P. K., Wilkinson, I. A. G., Soter, A. O., Hennessey, M. N., & Alexander, J. F. (2009). Examining the effects of classroom discussion on students' comprehension of text: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101(3), 740-764. doi.org/10.1037/a0015576
5. Rowe, M. B. (1986). Wait time: Slowing down may be a way of speeding up!. Journal of Teacher Education, 37(1), 43-50. doi.org/10.1177/002248718603700110
6. Day, R. R., & Park, J.-s. (2005). Developing reading comprehension questions. Reading in a Foreign Language, 17(1), 60-73. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66599