Create a key Concepts map about Multiple Readings

Description

Verb

Organize

Place in the Hybrid Sequence

  • Prepare for Class
  • ✔️In-Class
  • After Class

Template

  1. Students individually or in groups identify themes from the multiple texts.
  2. Students write down these themes in larger circles.  
  3. 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.  
  4. 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. 

  1. Students make small groups and read about four or five texts of varying difficulty on a single topic. Examples include:  
    1. Racial issue articles from Johannesburg’s Daily Rand 
    2. Excerpts from No More Strangers Now 
    3. 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. 
  2. 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.