Two months ago I shared a synthesis of reading strategies I had been using with my high school students in the May 11 session of Virtual Viral Hangouts through the Media Education Lab. In the presentation, I had participants focus on three of Beers and Probst’s signposts and one of their disruptive heart questions with Jennifer Fletcher’s ideas about having students do a PAPA Square with some of Renee Hobbs’s ideas about structure. 

I had originally envisioned that I would add to this work, make this presentation better, and possibly share it at the Fall Conference of the Iowa Council of Teachers of English. Sadly, Covid-19 has changed many of our plans for having large group meetings this fall. And Covid-19 also cut short more frequent use of these reading strategies.

Priority 1 for my school district involves “Education Equity and Improvement,” and I was working on these guiding questions with ALL of my students when the governor suspended school:

• • How can I broaden my perspectives?
  • How can I improve my reading skills?
  • How can I transfer essential rhetorical ideas to my own writing?

The presentation below attempts to bring together four writers and six works to analyze Justin Baldon’s TED Talk “Why I’m done trying to be ‘man enough’”: 

• • Renee Hobbs’s Create to Learn (2017): “What are the consequences of your creative work as it may affect the attitudes and behaviors of others?” (p. 19). In essence, this driving question for my students also became a driving question for me. What disruptive teaching practices am I creating to affect the attitudes and behaviors of others? How am I creating a “lifelong learning process that involves accessing, analyzing, creating, reflecting, and taking action, using the power of communication and information to make a difference in the world” (p 18)?
  • Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst’s Notice & Note (2013), Reading Nonfiction (2016), and Disrupting Thinking (2017): “Reading ought to lead to thinking that is disrupting, that shakes us up, that makes us wonder, that challenges us. Such thinking sets us on a path to change, if not the world, then at least ourselves” (2017, pp. 160-1).
  • Jennifer Fletcher’s Teaching Arguments (2015): Teaching for transfer to “enable writers to write for diverse audiences, purposes, and occasions.” This touches on a core standard in Multimedia Composition. Fletcher’s Teaching Literature Rhetorically (2018): “Teaching for transfer prepares twenty-first-century learners for a changing world” (p. XVI).

References

Beers, G. K., & Probst, R. E. (2017). Disrupting thinking: why how we read matters. Scholastic teaching resources (teaching strategies).

Beers, G. K., & Probst, R. E. (2013). Notice & note: strategies for close reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Beers, G. K., & Probst, R. E. (2016). Reading nonfiction: notice & note stances, signposts, and strategies. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fletcher, J. (2015). Teaching arguments: rhetorical comprehension, critique, and response. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Fletcher, J. (2018). Teaching literature rhetorically: transferable literacy skills for 21st century students. Portsmouth, NH: Stenhouse Publishers.

Hobbs, R. (2017). Create to learn: Introduction to digital literacy. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.