Sounds a bit dated, eh? But here’s the thing : The kids understand multiple layers of context INSTANTLY.

We shouldn’t blame them for this, but we also have to take it into consideration when selecting texts.īy selecting texts that invite students to access areas of deep and thorough prior knowledge, we can make them feel like experts AND help them to see why broadening their contextual pools of knowledge is inherently important (who doesn’t want to feel like they’re “in the know” as often as possible?).įor our opening satire example this year, my PLC is using a Saturday Night Live sketch from April of 2017. For example, ask the average junior to explain how a criminal trial works and I’ll bet good money the answer you get is closer to the plot of an Adam Sandler movie than actual reality.

Without such background, of course, students often struggle to pull genuine meaning from texts that to us seem highly readable. I don’t have much of ANY time to spend giving kids history and civics lessons to help fill gaps in their understanding! We don’t always have enormous windows of time in a given unit to help students get up to speed on the needed context to understand a text–in fact, if you’re dedicating the right amount of time to your writing workshop, then you might feel like I do. Hattie’s two reasons for selecting a modern piece are fantastic guidelines for satire selection in particular, and at least for some of your course content, as mentor text selection guidelines in general. In any given unit, I like to explore a variety of texts that stretch their reading comprehension skills while also giving them strong writing models to look to when they shift into author mode (or satirist mode, in this case). My English 11 class is a really challenging (I use that as a positive adjective here) collection of students whose reading and writing abilities range from a recently-mainstreamed ELL student to several students currently taking incredibly challenging writing courses like AP Seminar.

The list formatting appeals to readers with low stamina. It is short enough that my students will engage quickly. Even my least aware students know about the proposal to arm teachers. It sharply targets recent calls to arm teachers. Here’s what Hattie said about the text she selected:

I’d like to revisit two of those today as I consider the mentor texts for my own upcoming satire unit. In her piece, she argues that there are three reasons the piece was worth examining in class alongside the original. In one of her posts not so long ago, Hattie outlined a case for teaching a modern satire piece–a riff on the infamous A Modest Proposal.

Teaching satire with the onion