I wanted to share something I was inspired by...
I walked into an eighth grade Language Arts classroom. It is completely silent. Everyone is reading. There is a string holding a sign across the middle of the room that says "Warning: Do not enter". I ask the educator what the sign is for. She tells me that the learners haven't been told. There only directions are that this is a "catch up" day and that they can read, but talk to no one except their "family" - which is their table group.
The plans are over the next couple of days, that the sign hanging across the room will become a divider that they will not be allowed to cross. At one one point the school resource officer will come in and escort some of the families out to work elsewhere -without much explanation. The educator goes on to describe a few more things that the learners will be experiencing in the upcoming days all while they read and learn in class.
They are reading the "Diary of Anne Frank". These underlying activities are designed to give the learners experiences to relate, even if in a small way, to the the segregation and targeting in the text. I was so excited for these learners!
We know that connecting emotionally while you are learning deepens that experience. What a fantastic way for these learners to CONNECT with a text!
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