Program Features That Move the Needle in ELA Instruction
High-Quality Literature
The Great Books High School program features outstanding literature by award-winning authors. Stories are selected for their engaging, vivid writing and for their ability to support multiple interpretations and thought-provoking discussions, as well as for their diversity of settings, genres, and writing styles.
William Faulkner, author of “Barn Burning”
In-Depth Reading, Critical Thinking, and Writing Activities
Great Books develops students’ reading and thinking skills through the exploration of genuine problems of meaning raised by a reading selection. The sequence of Shared Inquiry activities encourages students to develop habits of effective readers and thinkers: to read closely, to think critically and write thoughtfully about what they have read, and to listen and respond to their classmates.
Students read along as a story is read aloud, ask questions about the story, and then reread and respond to the story with questions and notes about what they have read—all fundamental reading comprehension strategies. Then through a Shared Inquiry discussion, students practice three essential elements of critical thinking:
- Idea—Students develop and clarify ideas about a story’s meaning
- Evidence—Students support these ideas with evidence found in the story
- Response—Students listen to and consider the ideas of others
Writing—from simple note taking to composition of elaborated essays–is stressed as an integral part of students’ ongoing, personal engagement with the text.
Differentiated Instruction
Instructions for core activities are accompanied by support and challenge options to help leaders achieve the learning objectives with students of varying reading, critical thinking, and discussion levels. The instructions provided by these options are tied to a student learning spectrum, which presents the range of behaviors a teacher might expect to see in their students during the activities.
Linked to each student learning spectrum are modifications to aid the teacher in tailoring the activity to suit the learning needs of all students.
Striving readers and ELL students benefit from Great Books’ strong oral component and its focus on interpretation. Support options to accompany the Shared Inquiry sequence of activities are included with each Teacher’s Edition.
Teacher Support
The Leader’s Guides contain a range of support including:
- Reading comprehension strategies
- Daily interpretive classroom activities for each reading selection that build upon students’ ideas and questions
- Guidelines for leading discussion and blackline masters for recording and organizing thinking
- Passages for textual analysis and post-discussion writing
- Suggestions for evaluating students’ reading comprehension, critical thinking, discussion, and writing
- Planning and implementation suggestions
Social and Emotional Learning
Great Books programs incorporate social and emotional learning (SEL) using comprehensive K–12 SEL standards that address the following competencies identified by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL):
- Self-awareness and self-management
- Social awareness and relationship skills
- Responsible decision-making
Great Books programs and the SEL standards share the goal of helping students develop the skills they need to think critically, appreciate diverse perspectives, communicate, solve problems, and collaborate with others through respectful civil discourse.
Great Books High School materials provide thematic unit charts that are easy to integrate into social and emotional learning and the larger curriculum.
Professional Development
The Great Books Foundation offers live and online professional development courses and consultation days, video coaching, and live and online planning sessions to introduce teachers to Shared Inquiry and to provide continuing assistance. Learning Forward has cited the Great Books Foundation’s professional development courses as effective in improving students’ learning results.
