Benefits to Teachers

The Shared Inquiry method and Great Books programs help educators transform classrooms into vibrant, student-centered learning environments that get results--not only for your students but for you, too. Our professional development, materials, and research-based strategies recognize that teachers are learners. Want to support your own ongoing learning? Make Great Books a part of your curriculum.

Create a community of active learners

  • Increase collaboration, respect, and tolerance for divergent thinking among students
  • Build on students' strengths; value students' experiences and insights
  • Engage students in thinking about essential questions and big ideas in great literature
  • Provide support and challenge to all students
  • Help students gradually assume responsibility for questioning--each other and the text

Improve your questioning skills

  • Frame discussion questions and writing prompts that are open-ended, yet focused on reading for meaning
  • Show genuine interest in students' ideas and improve listening skills
  • Sharpen follow-up questioning to deepen thinking and discussion
  • Learn transferable strategies that build critical thinking and reading comprehension

Rely on support from the Great Books Foundation

  • Learn Shared Inquiry through active engagement in our professional development courses; receive support from our outstanding instructors with modeling, theory, and hands-on practice
  • Save time and rely on literature tested and proven to engage students in higher-level thinking
  • Use powerful, easy-to-use activities to help you structure students' reading, note-taking, and writing  

State Standards

See how Great Books aligns with your state's curriculum standards. Select your state from the list below and click on SUBMIT to view your state's Great Books alignment.

Our state alignments demonstrate how the Great Books program matches key components of language arts curriculum standards—which typically include reading comprehension, oral communication, writing, vocabulary, literature, and literary response—and how the program helps students meet specific performance objectives.