When we talk about devoting so many minutes to each subject in a school day, we need to make time for students to communicate about what really matters to them.
Thinking notes are text annotations (highlights, underlines or symbols made on the text or in the margins) that document student thinking during reading. Depending on how you structure the task, these notes can indicate agreement, objection, confusion or other relevant reactions to the text.
When I teach lessons about Martin Luther King Jr., I always wonder exactly how students will connect with the events and themes. My adult students are refugees and immigrants from different cultural backgrounds. Some of them were cultural minorities in their countries. Others are experiencing racial discrimination for the first time in the United States.
When Gary enrolled in her class, my friend Mary was warned that he had an attitude problem. But on his first day in her high school basic art class, she soon realized that Gary's main problem was the attitudes of certain other students.
I don’t have an answer to the question, “How should I talk to my students about Garissa?” But I have some real fears about the dangers of not contextualizing this incident.