Featured Text Grouping

This featured text grouping offers rich opportunities for students to engage with the topic of climate justice, specifically how they can decrease waste production. They will read across a variety of texts. As students analyze these texts, they will encounter differing perspectives that will allow them to grapple with their owns views. Formats of the text grouping include:

• Picture books,
• Informational video,
• Tweet, and
• Tumblr blog post.

While this text grouping can be used in many different ways, we have identified one option. Teachers can break students into 5 groups, with one group analyzing each of the 5 texts identified. After groups analyze and discuss their texts, students will participate in a Jigsaw activity in which one student from each group form a new group and explain what they discussed about their text.

Nonfiction/Informational Texts

In addition, we have included different pairs of authentic nonfiction/informational texts from our list of Connecting Texts. These paired texts offer opportunities for students to learn/practice how to read and comprehend ‘across’ sources. Each pair:

• Identify and provide a brief overview of each paired text;
• Identify a focal excerpt to be used for instruction;
• Explain the instructional purpose(s) in pairing these texts;
• Describe what is made possible when children read ‘across’ these texts rather than reading in isolation; and
• Provide a recommended strategy lesson for reading across texts from Nurturing Informed Thinking: Reading, Talking, and Writing Across Content-Area Sources Cummins (2018).