Sharing Strategies
As much as your students are facing new challenges now that they’re at Amherst, they bring a lot of knowledge and experience with them. Many will have learned effective strategies for annotating and responding to texts. The following activities could be faciliated through think/pair/share, small-group discussion, or discussion board.
10-15 minute in-class activity: Ask students to share with one another what they do when they read a text. Students will learn from one another and have the opportunity to reflect on their own reading practices. Such an activity will help students let go of the belief that they should already know how to do everything you are asking them to do.
A follow-up activity: Offer them a chance to practice those strategies with a common text. With their next course reading in hand, ask them to apply a new strategy as they begin to read it, and then to share how they did so. This activity gives them guided practice and can also serve as a launching point for your discussion of the reading itself.
Your turn: Sharing your own reading strategies will be helpful as well. Students will be curious to learn what you, a seasoned professional, do as you read.