Embedded Files
The Anticipation Guide Students Completed
As a pre-reading activity for the short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, students completed Anticipation Guides which required them to draw from their own funds of knowledge. Anticipation Guides give students an anchor when entering a text as it prompts them to think about its themes. This activity asked students to respond to statements that were related to the central ideas in the short story -- equality, truth, violence, justice, and society -- and mark the degree to which they resonated with each statement. Students responded only with their background knowledge gathered from lived experiences when explaining their rationales for each statement. Everybody’s reasoning was different as a result of the class’ array of unique identities and perspectives.
After individually completing the organizer, I asked students to walk to one of four corners in the room (labeled somewhat agree, strongly agree, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree) that matched their answer. Once in their respective corners, students were allotted time to discuss with their peers who chose that same response and explain their individual rationales. Students got to know each other better by gaining a brief understanding of each other's values -- informed by cultures, identities, and experiences, among other things. Not only did this activity serve as a way to prepare students for deeper reading, but it also acted as an opportunity to develop a classroom environment in which students felt respected and comfortable building off each other and understood that sharing their perspectives was an essential aspect of our class.
Student Examples
Student Examples
This artifact relates to the classroom environment as it demonstrates my dedication to creating a student-centered curriculum that shows students their experiences are valued; their voices deserve to be heard by others. Anticipation Guides was one of the multiple activities throughout the summer that strengthened our classroom community.
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