Exploring Identity and Perspectives

In this semantic feature analysis strategy, students use a grid to show how vocabulary words relate to one another and to conceptual frameworks (e.g., masculine versus feminine).

Students predict the meanings of vocabulary words before reading and confirm the accuracy of their predictions during and after reading. Students identify context clues from the text and revise their definitions accordingly.

A word wall is an organized display of vocabulary words drawn from the texts students are reading.

In reading against the grain students analyze the dominant reading of a text and engage in alternative or "resistant" readings. Resistant readings scrutinize the beliefs and attitudes that typically go unexamined in a text, drawing attention to the gaps, silences and contradictions.

This strategy exposes students to multiple short pieces of a text before they read it in its entirety. Students read selected quotes out of context and comment on both the selection and the comments of other students. The activity ends with students reflecting on their reactions to and predictions about the text.

Readers must refer back to the central text to answer text-dependent questions and provide evidence from the reading to support their answers. Students provide accurate, relevant and complete evidence. To do this well, students will often need to re-read the text several times. This approach privileges the text over prior knowledge, personal experience and pre-reading activities.

A strategy to introduce the anti-bias framework into group discussion and textual analysis. Students respond to and pose questions from the four anti-bias domains: identity, diversity, justice and action.

A comprehension strategy that builds speaking and listening skills through structured text-based discussion. Students record sentences from a text and then discuss their responses in small groups.

A structured discussion in which students examine issues and respond to open-ended questions about a text. Students use dialogue rather than debate to communicate with each other.

A strategy for organizing medium- to large-group discussions. Students are separated into an inner and outer circle. In the inner circle, or fishbowl, students have a text-based discussion; students in the outer circle listen to the discussion and take notes.