Designing Instruction on the Declaration of Independence
I'm
preparing to teach my undergraduate and graduate students how to teach
comprehension of text. I'm mighty partial to the Declaration of
Independence--its beauty, force, and historic role. So, I'll start with the Declaration
(short, tightly written) and then address designing instruction using
large and less tidy chunks of material; namely, on the Persian
Wars--approximately 490-479 BC.
General Objectives
If students are expected only to summarize the main idea of a text
(e.g., historical document, poem, play, philosophical work, novel), or
to answer a few superficial questions (who, what, when), and are not expected to
remember it for the rest of their lives, they might as well read the
Cliff Notes version. Why bother with the text itself if all you want is trivial information ABOUT it?
But if the point is to learn exactly what the author is saying--both
the details and the big picture; and to learn HOW to understand what
the author is saying; and to be strongly affected by the writing, then
students must "get" just about every line; they must get the flow of
the argument or story; and they must get how the author crafted it.
1. So, the first thing to teach students is what can BE
gotten from a text, so they will know WHAT to look for and how to
understand it. Here's where I'll start.
Copy of the Declaration of Independence.