Select an article based on education or related to literacy or related to a topic you really care about. A good place to start is The New York Times. Read the article. Write a few sentences about that article. Prepare a summary of this article following the summary paragraph on the next page. Then explain what the article means to you. The more you write, the more you make it easier for you, if you want to, to incorporate that article into your final essay. Starting in Week Two, each student will talk to the class about what he or she has been reading. The audience will listen for, at the very least, the speaker to address the following prompts.

Read only those stories that matter to you, always asking yourself:

(1) what does this topic or the point made about the topic by the author or authors remind me of?

(2) whom else in my life should this topic matter to and why?

(3) what do I think about what the author seems to say (implies) or says directly (states explicitly) about the issue—that is, what’s my opinion?

(4) what have I found interesting/baffling/amusing/shocking/annoying?

(5) why I first started reading this book or set of articles about this topic.

Make sure you note whether the piece you have read is an editorial or a news story. Tell us whether the book you’re reading is fiction or nonfiction. Make sure you transform the implied into explicit statements.