Infectious Respiratory Disease

Teaching Strategies

Notice & Note Nonfiction Signposts

Notice & Note is a reading strategy developed by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst.⁷⁵ In a “Notice and Note” reading session, students are asked to look for specific “signposts” that can help them track the development of plot and character, in literature, or of an argument, in nonfiction. Beers and Probst suggest for students to focus on five key elements on their first read of a nonfiction text: numbers and statistics, quoted words, absolute or extreme language, word “gaps” or needed vocabulary, and contrasts or contradictions in the author’s arguments. For each signpost, students are given some specific questions to ask, such as “Why did the author quote or cite this person?” These simple questions and things to look for can help students when reading dense or older texts.

Primary Source Analysis

In analyzing these primary sources, students will benefit from using the Primary Source Analysis Tool developed by the Library of Congress.⁷⁶ This is a simple note-taking guide that asks students to gather observations, asking questions such as “What do you notice first?” Students are then prompted to reflect on the source, hypothesizing audience, purpose, and importance, and finally to pose questions for further investigation.

Juicy Sentence Protocol

A “juicy sentence” is one where students benefit from breaking it down into its component parts in order to analyze meaning, word choice, tone, and what can be inferred.⁷⁷Certain documents, such as Tyler’s narrative description of her experiences or some of the Phipps Institute reports, contain sentences that are complex enough in their information and meaning to reward this analysis. Achieve The Core offers step by step guidance on this protocol.

Lateral Reading for Research

Over the last ten years, English teachers have increasingly moved to teach “lateral reading” as part of internet research, rather than focusing on the reliability of individual sources.⁷⁸ Lateral reading asks students to take a few steps before trusting any given fact, including looking up information about the source itself in another tab, and to cross-check information from multiple sources as well. Lateral reading makes research an iterative process, where students are continually finding new information, assessing the source of that information, checking for other sources of the same information and checking those sources as well. It is a strategy that calls for students to skim a great deal of information shallowly and then go deeper once they have identified reliable and meaningful sources.⁷⁹ Students will practice this skill when comparing different writings on tuberculosis spread and Philadelphia health when learning about Elizabeth Tyler, and will then need to apply it in their own research on medical or technological developments.