EDU415 Strategy Collection

Gwyneth M. Hudson

Geneva College

EDU415: Content Literacy in the Secondary Classroom

Dr. Michal Wargo

December 8, 2022
Paine, T. (2016) Common Sense. Dover Publications.

Common Sense is a primary source written by Thomas Paine. His goal in the piece is to persuade

the colonists that revolting against Britain is basically just “common sense.” Thus, he invokes a

number of different arguments as well as powerful rhetorical technique in accomplishing his end.

It is really quite a short read and not incredibly hard, so I think it would be ideal for students to at

least read some of it for the experience.

Corresponding Strategy: Annotations

The strategy of annotation is really quite a straightforward one to implement, not to mention one

that would be ideal for use in conjunction with the teaching of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

While Common Sense is a pretty straightforward text to university students and even high school

readers, to middle schoolers, it would be likely to pose a challenge, mostly in terms of verbiage,

since it was written in the eighteenth century. Thus, I would first assign my students a portion of

the book to complete as their assignment. Before ending our session on the day that I assigned it,

we would work together as a class to select symbols and denotations to represent key points,

words they did not know, ideas they had a question about, and things of the like. We would read

a paragraph of the assignment together, allowing them to practice and get a feel for the difficulty

of the text. They would then be expected to do another passage independently as they completed

the reading for homework. When we reconvened the next day, we would open the class by

talking about what the students had read, using the things they annotated as the structure for our

discussion.
Example of A Blank and Annotated Assigned Passage From Common Sense:

For homework: Read the following passage from Common Sense, annotating it using the

denotations upon which we decided in class today. (As a reminder, you are to mark important

pieces of information with a highlighter, supporting evidence with a single underline, key

words with a box, and confusing information or words with a question mark.)

“Besides, what have we to do with setting the world at defiance? Our plan is commerce, and that,

well attended to, will secure us the peace and friendship of all Europe; because it is the interest

of all Europe to have America a free port. Her trade will always be a protection, and her

barrenness of gold and silver secure her from invaders. I challenge the warmest advocate for

reconciliation, to show, a single advantage that this continent can reap, by being connected with

Great Britain. I repeat the challenge, not a single advantage is derived. Our corn will fetch its

price in any market in Europe, and our imported goods must be paid for buy them where we will.

But the injuries and disadvantages we sustain by that connection, are without number; and our

duty to mankind I at large, as well as to ourselves, instruct us to renounce the alliance: Because,

any submission to, or dependence on Great Britain, tends directly to involve this continent in

European wars and quarrels; and sets us at variance with nations, who would otherwise seek our

friendship, and against whom, we have neither anger nor complaint. As Europe is our market for

trade, we ought to form no partial connection with any part of it. It is the true interest of America

to steer clear of European contentions, which she never can do, while by her dependence on

Britain, she is made the make-weight in the scale of British politics.”

For homework: Read the following passage from Common Sense, annotating it using the

denotations upon which we decided in class today. (As a reminder, you are to mark important

pieces of information with a highlighter, supporting evidence with a single underline, key

words with a box, and confusing information or words with a question mark.)

“Besides, what have we to do with setting the world at defiance? Our plan is commerce, and that,

well attended to, will secure us the peace and friendship of all Europe; because it is the interest

of all Europe to have America a free port (?). Her trade will always be a protection, and her

barrenness of gold and silver secure her from invaders. I challenge the warmest advocate for

reconciliation, to show, a single advantage that this continent can reap, by being connected with

Great Britain. I repeat the challenge, not a single advantage is derived. Our corn will fetch its

price in any market in Europe, and our imported goods must be paid for buy them where we will.

But the injuries and disadvantages we sustain by that connection, are without number; and our

duty to mankind I at large, as well as to ourselves, instruct us to renounce the alliance: Because,

any submission to, or dependence on Great Britain, tends directly to involve this continent in

European wars and quarrels; and sets us at variance with nations, who would otherwise seek our

friendship, and against whom, we have neither anger nor complaint (?). As Europe is our market

for trade, we ought to form no partial connection with any part of it. It is the true interest of

America to steer clear of European contentions, which she never can do, while by her

dependence on Britain, she is made the make-weight(?) in the scale of British politics.”
DuVal, K. (2015). Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution.

Random House Publishers.

In no cursory manner does Kathleen DuVal examine neglected aspects of the Revolutionary War

in her book Independence Lost. Rather, she takes four hundred sixty-four pages to dive into the

lives of several individuals who were not British colonists, but who still played vital roles in the

American War for Independence. In doing so, she adds complexity to the narrative historians

usually tell, even going so far as to make the point that some rebels aligned themselves with the

American cause for reasons other than that they simply thought America should be free from

Britain. This book seems like a fantastic read – a thoroughly personal perspective on history in

an accessible format for upper level readers in a middle school social studies classroom.

Corresponding Strategy: SWBST

The SWBST strategy is one that stands for Somebody Wanted But So Then. Though

traditionally used in an ELA context with the goal of helping students identify and consider the

literary elements of a story as they appear in fiction, I think it would be really interesting to apply

this strategy to the individual stories of real historical figures. For, really, cannot this acronym be

the description for many people’s life stories? We all desire and pursue certain things, something

happens to affect those plans one way or the other, action must be taken to fulfill our original

intentions and desires, and then a lesson is learned in the end. The strategy is also designed to

help students explore different viewpoints, which is why I find it particularly compatible with

Kathleen DuVal’s book Independence Lost – because she does exactly the same thing in her own

writing. In short, the strategy is as simple as assigning students to read a passage and asking

them, upon completion, to select one character upon whom to focus their attention, determining
what it is that they want, the conflict or opposition that they face in attaining that desire, the

action they subsequently take to overcome the obstacle, and, finally, the resolution of the

character’s action. In the context of using this strategy to help students better understand the

different motives people had for being a part of the Revolutionary War in some way, shape, or

form, I would have the students actually complete the strategy as in the form of a small project. I

would ask them each to select a group or an individual on whom DuVal focuses in one of her

eight character chapters, to read the story, and then to complete the SWBST steps in relation to

the individual or group they picked. Once they have done this “research,” they will create a

poster detailing the individual they chose to consider, which they will present to the class. In this

way, the students will get an opportunity to develop an understandable summary of a number of

the different roles and motivations that engaged people during the Revolutionary War.
SWBST Blank Worksheet and Example Worksheet

SWBS THE NARRATIVE

SWBS THE NARRATIVE

The characters I considered in reading the chapter on Alexander
S McGillivray from Independence Lost were the Creek Indians.

They wanted to maintain sovereignty of their land and borders

W against European settlement in the region.

The British were encroaching upon their lands, unlike the French or
B Spanish settlers before them did.

The Creeks negotiated a settlement with the British about boundary

S lines in Florida, killing settlers and livestock found beyond it.

The Creeks and the British ended up on the same side after the
T Seven Years’ War in relation to the Proclamation Line and
negotiated a peace in which the British acknowledged the Creeks’
right to kill settlers who trespassed onto their land.
Spiegelman, A. (1986). Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. Pantheon Books.

A final graphic novel that explores the effects of the Holocaust on families, Maus traces the tale

of Art Spiegelman’s relationship with his father, a Holocaust survivor, as well as his father’s

experience during the horror. Spiegelman makes the artful decision in this piece to portray each

of the different people groups as a different animal. In other words, he portrays the Jews as mice,

the Nazis as cats, the Americans as dogs, and so on. This piece is, therefore, brimming with

layers through which to sift to discover what historical narrative the author is trying to tell by his

use of graphics.

Corresponding Strategy: Pyramid/Snowball Strategy (Heroes & Villains)

The Heroes and Villains Pyramid/Snowball Strategy that Josh shared with our class is a stellar

strategy to go along with helping students better understand the story of Maus by Art

Spiegelman. The discussion nature of this strategy allows them to generate new ideas on a given

topic, such as the Holocaust, and to refine their new ideas as they rehash them with their peers a

number of times. Moreover, the snowball strategy also helps correct misconceptions students

may have about the topic at hand. The strategy is implemented in terms of heroes and villains by

telling students to develop a list of the five greatest villains in the world along with a separate list

of the five greatest heroes. They will be given five minutes to come up with their own

individuals lists before being asked to pair up with someone and, through discussion, come up

with a combined list of five heroes and five villains. After that, the process would continue in

groups and, eventually, the whole class, so that, by the end, the class has developed two lists of

five individuals each total. For the purposes of my use of the strategy, it would look different in
that the students would be given a different prompt, and, rather than creating lists of heroes and

villains, I would simply use it as a way to make sure everyone got to respond to Maus and to

give opportunity for refined thought on what is actually a thematically and substantively difficult

book.
Prompt and Space to Write Thoughts for Each Round of Maus Discussion

Do you agree or disagree with Art Spiegelman’s decision to write Maus as a graphic novel?

Why or why not?

Initial Response (2 Minutes):

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Response After Partner Discussion (6 Minutes):

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Response After Small Group Discussion (10 Minutes):

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Response After Whole Class Discussion (15 Minutes):

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Johnson, Steven. (2018). How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern

World. Viking Press.

This book by Steven Johnson is a largely expositional text about the development of six different

innovations that we enjoy today: glass, cold, sound, clean, time, and light (as he characterizes

each in his table of contents). Asserting in his introduction that we often focus too much on the

people, actually, and not enough on the inventions that have shaped our lives, Johnson does, in

fact, go further in assessing how each connects to the rest of history. Thus, his book provides a

nice foundation for transitioning students from expositional writing to persuasive writing or

writing for analysis.

Corresponding Strategy: GIST Summary

Explanatory texts often stand as work that can be hard to follow, especially at the middle school

level, when students are just learning how to dive into arguments and grasp the larger scope of a

text without getting bogged down in all the detail. As such, the “GIST” summary method shared

by Jeremiah will prove useful when I have my students read a book such as How We Got To

Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World – a primarily explanatory book tracing the

historical roots and effects of innovations in the realms of glass, cold, sound, clean, time, and

light. The GIST strategy works by having students first read a short passage of the text at hand

and, then, afterwards, answering the questions who, what, when, where, why, and how based on

what they read. Once they have collected all the raw information they need, they will be asked to

distill the information into a short summary of the original piece of text. As a result, they will be

able to remember and explain the “gist” of the work. One example of the way I could use this

particular strategy in combination with the text I have chosen would be to have my students each
read one or two pages of a particular chapter, say, for instance, the chapter on sound (since at a

middle school level of social studies, we would probably be talking about Alexander Graham

Bell). Assuming we had used this strategy in class before, they would each conduct the GIST

strategy on their own with the section of text for which they were responsible, with the goal of

then working through the entire chapter in order and hearing from each student about the

argument being made or evidence being presented in their particular section. By the end of class,

then, we would have covered an entire chapter of a book as well as walked away with a more

refined understanding of the case the author was trying to make. This would then enable us to

have a broader perspective on a certain innovation of history as we continue on through our

study of a certain era.

Example of a Blank and Completed GIST Strategy Worksheet

Who:
A mathematician named Alan
Turing and a man working at
Bell (Alexander Graham
Bell) Labs named A.B. Clark
GIST Summary
What: When:
Developed SIGSALY, a During the years of World
secure communications line War 2. SIGSALY went into
that encoded human speech operation on July 15, 1943.
as mathematical expression
so as to keep military
correspondence secret during
World War 2.

Where: Why: How:

Washington, D.C. was where
the first transatlantic phone
call using SIGSALY was sent
from. The call was made to
London.
In order to keep the Germans
from learning of the Allies’
plans should phone calls be
intercepted, and it worked,
too. Though the Germans did
intercept many calls, they
were never able to understand
ones encoded by SIGSALY.
The researchers designed
SIGSALY to take
soundwaves and frequencies
and turn them into a series of
zeroes and ones.

Summary:
The section we had of the chapter on sound focused on the adaptation from simply making
sound come through a telephone in a natural way to keeping messages transferred via this
method private. We learned that two men, named Alan Turing and A.B. Clark, accomplished
this out of necessity during World War 2 to keep German intelligence from intercepting Allied
information by developing the communications program SIGSALY. The program turned
sound waves and frequencies into series of zeroes and ones, was first debuted in a transatlantic
call from D.C. to London, and proved effective in encoding and protecting information relayed
via telephone during the years of the war.
 GIST Summary
Who: What: When:

Where: Why: How:

Summary

Rhodes, J.P. (2018). Towers Falling. Hachette Book Group.

In this juvenile fiction novel, author Jewel Parker Rhodes explores the effects of the attack on the

Twin Towers in September 2001. The story is about a young girl named Dèja who is intrigued

when her teacher mentions that they will soon be learning about events that had a profound

impact on their home and community. She gradually learns about the Twin Towers and is even

able to learn more about her father’s past through the whole experience. Thus, Rhodes’ goal in

writing is to persuade students to care about history. Most students anymore were not alive for

the fall of the Twin Towers, yet the event profoundly impacted the lives of people that they

know. I would absolutely love to use this book in my future classroom for this reason.

Corresponding Strategy: Reciprocal Teaching

September 11, 2001, is one of those topics about which students – and just people in general –

have a lot of questions. Just like the sinking of the Titanic or the volcanic eruption that buried

alive the people of Pompeii, 9/11 caters to the natural human curiosity surrounding catastrophe.

However, there is also an added element of eeriness that comes from the event having taken

place in the so recent past. Thus, reciprocal teaching would be a beneficial literacy strategy, I

believe, in reading the book Towers Falling, because it would help students understand the book

and the event and the effects better by having some of their questions answered. Reciprocal

teaching allows the opportunity for your students themselves to be the teachers as they learn

from a certain book. After reading a brief passage at the beginning of a chapter or the whole

piece, students write down their predictions about what will happen next, providing support for

their assertions from the text. Throughout the rest of the reading, students are encouraged to

make clarifying comments and questions, as well as to connect the subject matter to their own

lives or learning. They can also be encouraged to describe the way in which they visualize a

passage as they read. Regardless of what they come up with along the way, they will summarize
what was read once it has been completed. I would use this in my own social studies class by

reading to the students for a few minutes each day as we went through a unit on modern U.S.

history. The students would have reciprocal teaching sheets available to them with prompting

questions on which they would jot down their thoughts and ideas. I would allow a few minutes

each day to talk about any burning questions, but my intent would be to have one big class

discussion at the end of the unit about the book and about 9/11 in general. My hope, however,

from using the reciprocal teaching strategy, would be that students make the material their own

and start meaningful conversations about a real and hard topic with the adults and friends in their

lives who were in some way, shape, or form affected by it.

Reciprocal Teaching Question Sheet

Predict Question

Based on what you’ve read and what you Is there anything that you did not understand?
know, what do you think will happen next?

What were you thinking about as you were

reading?
What clues helped you to think about what
will happen next?
Have you ever known anyone like one of the
characters?

Is your prediction logical?

What are you curious about?

Clarify Summarize

What word did you not understand? What are the most important ideas or events?

What can you predict it means?

What does the author want you to remember
or learn?
What does it actually mean?

What was this passage mostly about?

What ideas were unclear to you?

Visualize

What did you envision in your mind as you read?

References
Andrews. “Excerpts from Common Sense, By Thomas Paine.” https://www.peaster.net/cms/lib/

TX01000798/Centricity/Domain/359/Excerpts%20from%20Common%20Sense.pdf

DuVal, K. (2015). Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution. Random

House Publishers.

Johnson, Steven. (2018). How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World.

Viking Press.

Paine, T. (2016) Common Sense. Dover Publications.

Rhodes, J.P. (2018). Towers Falling. Hachette Book Group.

Spiegelman, A. (1986). Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. Pantheon Books.

PLEASE NOTE: While they are not formally cited in this collection, the author acknowledges

that all five strategies included were presented by her classmates in EDU415: Content Literacy in

the Secondary Classroom. As such, she credits her peers with providing basic formats for most

of the resources. However, each of the resources included here was created and adapted by the

author of this work so as to be uniquely tailored to the trade books and assignments she has

designed.