Do You Teach Reading?

Active Reading Strategies Constructs Prepare students for reading Background The “closet hooks” on which to “hang” new information and learning

Active Reading Strategies Purpose Why am I reading this? Historical content/context Author’s personal experience Common personal experience of African Americans

Active Reading Strategies Step behind the author Why is she/he writing? To share a personal experience To promote a cause To expose a wrong To relate to a shared common experience Who is the speaker of the poem (who is “saying” the poem)? Is the speaker someone others could relate to? Does the speaker represent a group bigger than the speaker her/himself? Why does the poet use this speaker word(s)/experience Rather than “what does the speaker say…” ask “why does Woodson have the speaker say…” Or, “why does Woodson use the word…” to get students to think about the historical context, or bigger meaning

Active Reading Strategies Journaling/Notetaking Mark the text (underline historical references, circle writer/group experiences Summarize each stanza in a sentence Write down one comment or question for each stanza Circle words that need to be defined

Brown Girl Dreaming Jacqueline Woodson

Brown Girl Dreaming “Second Daughter’s Second Day on Earth” (handout)

Civil Rights References to the Civil Rights Movement “South Carolina at War” p. 72 “Afros” p. 259 “Power to the People” p. 302 “The Revolution” p. 308

Themes Segregation “Fate & Faith & and Reasons” p. 393 “we fold laundry, white towels separated from the colored ones. Each a threat to the other and I remember the time I spilled bleach on a blue towel, dotting it forever. The pale pink towel, a memory of when it was washed with a red one. Maybe there is something, after all, to the way some people want to remain—each to its own kind. But in time maybe everything will fade to gray.” (lines 9-19)

Themes Segregation/Public Accommodations “What Everybody knows Now,” p. 237 “Even though the laws have changed/ my grandmother still takes us/ to the back of the bus when we go downtown/ in the rain” (lines 1-4) “I….see the ones/who take a seat up front, daring/anyone to make them move. And know/this is who I want to be. Not scared/…Brave/ like that” (lines 12-16) Still, my grandmother takes…/me right past the restaurants that have to let us sit/ wherever we want now” (lines 17-19) “We walk straight past Woolworth’s/….because the one time my grandmother went they made her wait and wait” (lines 21-25) She remembers her grandmother “waiting quietly/ long past her turn” (lines 31-32)

Themes Segregation/Jim Crow/Public Accommodations “Greenville, South Carolina, 1963” p. 30 “On the bus, my mother moves with us to the back./ It is 1963/ in South Carolina./ Too dangerous to sit closer to the front and dare the driver/ to make her move. Not with us. Not now.” (lines 1-6) “This isn’t Ohio, my mother says, as though we understand….her back sharp as a line. DO NOT CROSS!/ COLOREDS TO THE BACK! Step off the curb if a white person comes toward you don’t look them in the eye.

Themes Employment Discrimination- “Negro Jobs” “Daywork” p. 55 “There is daywork for colored women.…their dark bodies fill the crosstown buses, taking them…where the white people live.” (lines 1-8) “Two days a week, [the grandmother] joins the women, taking on this second job…The money she gets from part-time teaching isn’t enough…She says, cleaning is what I know. I’m not ashamed,/if it feeds my children.” (lines 13-20)