Reading Strategies

Scaffolding Students' Interactions

with Texts

Conversations Across Time

Reading

Outcomes

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Reading Strategies

Tools for

Reading, Writing,

& Thinking

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Use this Strategy:

Before Reading

During Reading

After Reading

Targeted Reading Skills:

· Condense or summarize ideas from one or more texts

· Compare and contrast information from one or more texts

· Make text-to-text, text-to-self, and/or text-to-world connections

What is it?

One of the reasons people read great fiction and nonfiction is to provide a window into another’s experience and understanding of the world.  It is important to immerse our students in a variety of perspectives and to engage them in dialogue that expands and deepens their thinking on issues, events, or people’s actions.  If we are to develop our students’ critical thinking, we need to provide opportunities for them to compare and contrast different perspectives and opinions on the same topic.  Tom Loftus (Athena High School) developed this strategy to use with his 9^th grade class as a way to prepare for discussion, as well as generate ideas for a subsequent writing assignment.

What does it look like?

Tom designed a multi-genre unit based on the essential question, “Is the world a fair and just place?”  After his students completed reading John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, Langston Hughes’ “Cora Unashamed,” and William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, he had them complete the graphic organizer below as preparation for a small group discussion where the students would share their ideas and gather new ideas for their group.  Tom modified the “Four Square Perspectives” graphic organizer from Tools for Reading, Writing and Thinking.  Below is the template that he distributed for his students to record their notes for class the next day.  He asked his student to record how each of the characters cited would answer the essential question in the center.  The fourth quadrant is a place for students to answer the question from their own vantage point, which helps them to make text-to-text and text-to-self connections.  They had to cite evidence from the text(s) to support their claims.
 

• Variations on the prompt or topic in the "center square” can include themes, essential questions, social issues, laws and customs, historical events, controversial statements, time periods.

• The following is a list of options for the “surrounding squares” of the organizer historical figures, writers, well-known personalities, politicians, critics, reviewers, entertainers, etc.

• The 3-way Venn diagram can be adapted for a three-way "conversation across time."  The 3-way Venn also encourages students to make connections or consider conversations between character perspectives (e.g., What advice would Juana give to Juliet about fairness and justice in the world?).