Chapter 6

Anticipation Guides
I believe that it is important to get every student, whether they are independent or dependent readers, into the text that you want them to read. I think the Anticipation Guides are a good idea to get students thinking about what they are going to read. The example Beers gives of Mr. Davidson's classroom using these guides is what any student would say if something is too hard; however, isn't that the whole point of learning? By challenging your own thoughts it helps you open your mind to new, if everything was easy then we would all be geniuses.


KWL
When I was in high school we used the KWL chart in almost all my classes. I think they are important way of realizing what you already know and you may be surprised what information you have tucked away. Also, what you want to know, by finding something that may interest you will help you become engaged in the text. And finally what you learned, which proves that you can learn something from anything. I think it would be important to have student do this individually because just as the example showed, the teacher was the one generating the questions, which didn't help the students.


Tea Party
I find this to be another helpful strategy to not only get students involved with thinking about the text, but to define such things as, setting, character relations, plot, comparing and contrasting, sequence, etc. When students make their own predictions about what is going to happen, hopefully it will excite them to see if they are right and think more clearly about the text.