Description
Verb
Organize
Place in the Hybrid Sequence
- Prepare for Class
- ✔️In-Class
- After Class
Template
- Students individually or in groups identify themes from the multiple texts.
- Students write down these themes in larger circles.
- Students draw smaller circles labeled with a reading, conclusion, or a quotation and connect them to those larger circles.
- Or, in a table format, the themes can be column headers and specific readings can be placed in its rows.
- Students share their key concepts maps and discuss how finding connections between texts made them notice something new.
Example
Adapted from Chris Van Ruiten-Greene’s activity in Reading for Understanding
A teacher supplemented Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country with orbiting texts about South Africa during the period the novel is set.
- Students make small groups and read about four or five texts of varying difficulty on a single topic. Examples include:
- Racial issue articles from Johannesburg’s Daily Rand
- Excerpts from No More Strangers Now
- Students isolate major themes and link these themes to passages from the novel. Themes include: the trap of poverty; lessons from enormous loss; and shallowness of division that lead to enmity.
- Students diagram the connection between these themes and relevant passages from the novel in a table, mind map, or poster and share their connections with the rest of the class.
References
Cohn, J. (2021). Skim, dive, surface: Teaching digital reading (First edition.). West Virginia University Press.
Schoenbach, R., Greenleaf, C., & Murphy, L. (2012). Reading for Understanding: How Reading Apprenticeship Improves Disciplinary Learning in Secondary and College Classrooms (2nd edition). Jossey-Bass.