Students are given opportunities to accomplish tasks and demonstrate their understandings using a variety of assessment methods. Finally, effective teachers use strategies which empower students to take control of their own learning. Strategic teachers implement these strategies through their thematic units in order to keep the learning meaningful and motivating. Place students in cooperative groups. Provide each group with enough copies of a reading selection, a blank overhead transparency, and a variety of overhead markers.
Students read the selection silently to themselves.
After reading, students reflect on their interpretation of the text and orally share their individual interpretations with the other members of their group. After everyone in the group shares their understandings, then the group develops a group interpretation of the text. The group must then generate a visual representation of the group s interpretation on the blank overhead transparency. After all groups have completed this process, each group is given an opportunity to place their transparency on the overhead projector and explain their interpretation of the text as it relates to their visual representation on the transparency. When all groups have gone through this process, list the many different interpretations that emerged and discuss them as a class.