Seeing Integration From Different Viewpoints

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

Is there more than one way to think about a work of nonfiction? Students will answer this question as they read and discuss Robert Coles' The Story of Ruby Bridges, a short story about court-ordered school desegregation in 1960s Louisiana. In this Directed Reading-Thinking Activity, students make predictions about the story before reading, focus on key ideas as they read aloud in groups, and enhance their comprehension of the story with a postreading class discussion. Finally, students participate in a postreading group activity in which they use colored glasses to view court-ordered desegregation from different perspectives.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

• Possible Sentences for The Story of Ruby Bridges: Use this printout to help students make and verify predictions about The Story of Ruby Bridges.
  
  

• Group Chart for Five Decision Lenses: Students can use this chart to record observations from positive, negative, emotional, factual, and limitless points of view.

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Duke, N.K., & Pearson, P.D. (2002). Effective practices for developing reading comprehension. In A.E. Farstrup & S.J. Samuels (Eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction (3rd ed., pp. 205-242). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

• Effective instruction in reading comprehension involves the explicit use of specific strategies as well as the chance to read, discuss, and write about texts.
  
  
• Students need to read texts beyond those specifically designed for reading instruction, especially those with a clear message or purpose.
  
  
• An important comprehension strategy is prediction; this can involve making predictions, activating prior knowledge, previewing, and overviewing.
  
  
• Predicting should have students use their prior knowledge to improve their understanding of new ideas they locate in a text.

 

De Bono, E. (1999). Six thinking hats. New York: Back Bay Books.

• Improving communication and decision-making in groups is a matter of getting people to see things from different perspectives.
  
  
• One effective way to improve group discussion and practice seeing things from different points of view is to limit participants to expressing views that correspond to a specific posture, regardless of their true thoughts. This is particularly effective when discussing a controversial topic.

   

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