The Discussion Cards are designed to be used with any text that students read, listen to, or view in order to learn how to build knowledge of the field of study. Each discussion card has two sides, Critical Reading and Disciplinary Thinking.
Critical Reading questions are aligned to the Common Core Literacy standards. They are intended for students to explore the key ideas, details, craft, and structure of the text. There are also questions that help students integrate information into their own developing schema of the discipline's field of study.
Disciplinary Thinking questions are aligned to California standards and frameworks. These questions are designed to provide a lens for exploring and analyzing the text more formally. When used routinely, Disciplinary Thinking questions create habits of mind, a disciplinary lens through which students begin to see the world.
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"Building the Field" is Stage 1 of the Teaching and Learning Cycle, a scaffolded process for English Learners where students build deep content knowledge through language rich experiences. Because this stage more often than not involves a lot of exploration of the topic through rich text-based discussion, the Disciplinary Discussion Cards were developed. The questions on the cards are designed to support learning from complex text - a reputable source that students read, view or listen to that offers the reader important information or a new perspective. Teachers and students can choose a question (or an extremely limited number of questions) from the Discussion Cards for many purposes such as to:
Regardless of English language proficiency or other learner designation, we believe that, with the right support, all students can learn disciplinary content through complex text. Examples of differentiated supports to ensure access to the content and to equitable participation in the discussion include:
No tool can promote high-quality academic discourse in the absence of a posivite classroom climate where students are expected to take risks, push on each other's thinking, seek out alternative viewpoints, and learn to work independently and collaboratively.