Skinny Books

The importance of activating prior knowledge to reading comprehension can hardly be overstated and last night I read about an interesting (though teacher time intensive, but thank goodness for the Internet) activity called Skinny Books.

Skinny Books are a collection of related pictures, magazine articles, newspaper clippings, trade books and other sources.

Here's how I might use this: When teaching on the Cold War, I would start the unit with a skinny book of pictures of the destruction around Europe, propaganda posters, newspaper clippings, song lyrics, political cartoons, etc. Students would look through and study these skinny books to give them a better idea of the state the world was in at the end of World War II. We would then make a list of predictions about the relationship between the US and Europe; the relationship between the US and USSR; the state of Germany; the future of the atomic bomb; the role of the US in the world; the state of the American economy. Students may then be write a journal entry as if they were 8th graders in 1945.

And the next day, get the textbook out and get some reading done. Reading every day is class vital.