Strategy: Book Tour

A few months ago, I wrote about a presentation I gave to a class full of teachers in the Twin Cities area. They were mostly Math and Science teachers who were hoping to learn how to include literacy strategies in their classrooms. I invited them to share what they learned with Literacy Log, and got one great response. I highly recommend a look at Emily Kjesbo-Johnson's literacy strategies site for Math teachers. Today, I'll talk about just one of the strategies she includes.

Book Tour

10-30 minutes.

Any age level.

I have seen variations of this strategy before, but Emily describes it very well here. She includes a downloadable version of the handout she used.

Directions

The Book Tour is meant to introduce students to a textbook or any other new reading material. According to Emily, "it can be a worksheet that groups work on together, or a tour of the book's features led by the teacher."

Be sure to compel your students to find the most important sections of the book. For a textbook, this would include the Table of Contents, Chapter Review section, the Index, and nowadays a website.

Benefits

Think of this as part of an extended version of the KWL strategy. The Book Tour will help your students assess what they know and what they want to know about the subject matter covered in the book. It will also make the book much less intimidating.

Just before the school year began, Emily wrote about why she would start the year off with a Book Tour. "Our math textbooks are loaded with many helpful resources," she wrote, "but students are often so intimidated by the book that they never look past the practice problems."

Recently, I asked Emily how it went, and she was pleased with the results. "I think that as students went through it, they saw how the book wasn't just an intimidating giant book, but could be a valuable resource for their work during the year," she said.

Variations

The Alphabet Words game I featured yesterday could be used as a component of a Book Tour. It might be especially useful for introducing students to the Index or Glossary.

Photo: "Middle School Textbooks" by Flickr user "herzogbr." Thanks!

Strategy: KWL

KWL is a simple literacy strategy that has quickly become a essential tool of literacy specialists. It stands for "Know, Want, Learn" and can be used to help students navigate a text.

Students start by brainstorming what they already know about the topic of the text. Then, they generate a list of things that they want to know. While reading, or while reflecting on the completed text, students make a list of things they learned.

This site from a University of Indiana course provides a good overview of KWL, as well as an example of what a completed KWL chart might look like.

KWL can easily be applied to Social Studies classes. It allows students to reflect on their understanding of an issue and focus their reading to fill gaps in understanding. Here are a few examples:

• The site learnnc.org has a great 3-lesson plan involving KWL and state history.
• The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development provides an example of a KWL chart for a lesson on the 1995 Kobe earthquake.
• This teacher has a KWL chart available for download and has added an "H" to the chart, encouraging readers to think about how they will learn more about the subject.
  

Success Story: JEB Stuart HS, Falls Church, VA

Click here for an article by Carol Guensburg of Edutopia.org about a school that sparked a turnaround in part by making literacy a priority in every subject. JEB Stuart High School "has boosted reading-proficiency scores on the Virginia Standards of Learning tests from 64 percent in 1998 to 94 percent in 2004."

All teachers at JEB Stuart have training in literacy; even math and music teachers have begun to weave literacy into their classes. K-W-L (Know, Want, Learn) is mentioned as one of the core strategies.