RDG 4330: Teaching Reading/Language Arts in Middle School: Teacher Resources

Finding ways to organize your classroom instruction for knowledge building and literacy learning can be challenging. How can you incorporate more nonfiction and informational text in your content area curriculum while expanding and deepening representation with diverse texts? What can motivate student learning while providing equity and access for different learning styles and needs? Text sets are the answer! In Text Sets in Action: Pathways Through Content Area Literacy, authors Erika Thulin Dawes and Mary Ann Cappiello demonstrate how text sets offer students the opportunity to build critical thinking skills and informational literacy while generating interest and engagement across the content areas. Put your students in the center of the meaning-making in your classroom with multimodal multi-genre text sets in action.  In Text Sets in Action, the authors: Model how text sets build foundational skills and metacognitive strategies as students experience a carefully scaffolded and sequenced exploration of ideas, academic, and content vocabulary Explain how text sets encourage classroom discussion by having students ask questions about what they read, debate different perspectives, and relate the texts to their own personal experiences and the changes they would like to see in the world Show how children's literature and multimodal, multi-genre texts can serve as mentor texts for student writing and inspire creativity and advocacy Demonstrate how to curate text sets that can introduce diverse and underrepresented voices into the classroom, fostering appreciation for different points of view and generate deeper critical thinking Provide resources and suggestions for designing text sets - a multimodal, multi-genre text set can include children's literature of all genres, as well as digital texts, YouTube videos, news articles, podcasts, and more   Text Sets in Action will help you create a collection of text sets that can be added to or edited over the years to align with your lesson plan goals. Teachers who have adopted this approach saw greater student reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. By introducing a multitude of text, teachers will ignite a spirit of inquiry and engagement for lifelong learning.  

Text Sets: Multimodal Learning for Multicultural Students integrates a multicultural approach to teaching with standards-based instruction and multimodal learning opportunities in a variety of content areas. This unique combination allows teachers to meet the demands of their curriculum while recognizing and honoring the diverse students in their classroom. Each chapter provides an annotated text set with a specific theme, curricular goals, and instructional activities that suggest ways for students to interact with the texts. In addition to providing ready-made text sets, it models a framework for teachers to build their own text sets based on the individual needs of their schools and communities.

*See ebook, page 48 for information about "Text Sets"
This is a question many teachers ask, wondering how they can add a new element to an overloaded curriculum. The answer is yes; if teachers want their students to learn complex new concepts in different disciplines, they need to help develop their students’ reading skills. The author takes on the challenge of helping students apply reading comprehension strategies in any subject. Tovani shows how teachers can expand on their content expertise to provide the instruction students need to understand specific technical and narrative texts.

Looking for a way to increase engagement, differentiate instruction, and incorporate more informational text and student writing into your curriculum? Teaching with Text Sets is your answer! This must-have resource walks you through the steps to create and use multi-genre, multimodal text sets for content-area and language arts study. It provides detailed information to support you as you choose topics, locate and evaluate texts, organize texts for instruction, and assess student learning. This guide is an excellent resource to help you meet the College and Career Readiness and other state standards.