Drawing upon our Differences
Pete Johnson

Overview:
This lesson is designed to get students to think about their preconceived notions of a future topic before they get into their reading. It allows the teacher, as well as the rest of the class to look at what everyone is thinking.

Goals:
The goal of this lesson is to allow every student in the class an equal chance of expression without putting them on the spot in a discussion situation. The nice part about this lesson is that it doesn't differentiate between ability levels. Students need to have some prior knowledge to succeed, but often it's not a problem if the subjects are introduced and phrased correctly.

Materials Needed:
For this activity your need crayons or markers and some paper to draw on. Color (with the markers and crayons) really helps when motivating students to participate and it helps to make their drawings more recognizable.

Activity:
Before getting into a new book with your students think of some important concepts or character types that are present in the text. List one or several of them one at a time and have the students draw what they think of. After drawing, students can be split into groups and discuss why they drew what they drew. Composition can become a part of the activity if desired by having the groups fit their pictures into a single written description.
After comparing you can begin to talk about getting into the text and why these concepts/characters are important. You might also want to revisit your drawings after getting far enough into the book for students to see the characters and concepts that were being stressed. Comparison/contrast essays would be a good selection for the students to engage in.

Accommodation:
Drawing is a very accommodating activity. Some people have a lot of talent, some have less, but often students are able to understand what their peers have drawn. In this case even if they don't recognize the drawing each student has an opportunity to explain what they were going for. The most difficult situation I think I might encounter with this less is blind students. One of my colleagues is working with a blind student in his composition class right now and it's been an eye opener for all of us in the department. If this were to happen I would suggest that the student could work with another student and dictate his drawing. The oral aspect of being in groups would allow the student some access to the knowledge that we're sharing, but I would still worry about the visual orientation of the lesson.

Assessment:
I think that the comparison later on in the term is essential to this activity. Letting students think about concepts before reading allows them to validate their knowledge. At the same time later comparison allows the teacher to look at how the student is doing with the text as well as how they're individually fitting their prior knowledge into their understanding.