Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows how to create reading guides that serve to aid the comprehension of and thinking about the texts teachers ask their students to read. It explores the reading and writing workshops that are a part of many disciplinary classrooms. Literacy growth is a goal teachers must have for every one of their students, and literacy is very much connected with the goals of larger change within our society. Teachers can help students get ready, both cognitively and emotionally, to read a text by providing an anticipation guide constructed to activate their thinking on the topics that are dealt with in that text. Suggestions for exploration include memory, utopia, government control versus individual rights and freedoms, genetic engineering, capital punishment, infanticide, medical ethics, and surrogate motherhood.