Principles for Text Selection

[RaeRussell]

Hi, all! As we think about text selection for the next few LMs, here are some principles we might consider to guide our decisions, our text choices, and the order of our texts:

• What is the purpose of this program/class/unit as a whole? What outcomes do I hope that learners will have by the end of their experience?

• What is the purpose of this individual book? What do I hope the learner will experience or take away from reading it?

• How does this individual book contribute to the outcomes that I hope the learners will have?

• What conversations or reflections do I hope this book will spark?

• What previous knowledge will be helpful to learners before they tackle this text? Where and how have I given them that knowledge?

• How will this book set the learner up for future texts I hope they will read?

• What are the challenges of reading this text? (Scholarly? Long? Confusing?) Have I given the learner additional time or resources for overcoming these challenges in my planning? How will I set the learner up for understanding these challenges ahead of time?

• What’s likely to be fun/satisfying about this text? How can I highlight that for the learner?

[Flurrywinde]

Great stuff here. Thanks for posting this!