This toolkit aims to support educators in the process of selecting and analyzing texts based on complexity and cultural relevance. The resources focus on tools for reflecting on the identities of educators and the students they serve, analyzing texts with multiple lenses, and considering implications for use in their specific context. The resources here may support your process of text selection, or they may be embedded into your lesson preparation process for pre-selected texts (with or without instructional materials). You’ll look at each text as it stands alone, but you should also think about how the text fits into the unit you are teaching and how this text may impact instructional decisions across the year.
- LITERACY
- LESSON
- PLANNING
- TOOLS
- K-12
Table of Contents
Text Analysis Toolkit
Know Yourself, Know Your Students
A stand-alone reflection resource meant to support educators in thinking about their own identities and those of their students. Use at strategic points over time (for example the beginning of the school year and after each semester) to continually reflect.
Initial Considerations for Complexity and Cultural Relevance
A resource to use after a first read of a text to determine whether it’s usable for the classroom and to begin thinking about complexity and relevance. This includes determining whether a text should not be used or whether the teacher will need to be thinking carefully about attending to cautions in the text when using with students.
Expanded Qualitative Analysis
A tool to analyze features of complexity and cultural relevance more deeply in order to prepare for instruction. The rubric portion of the tool comes from the qualitative complexity rubrics that were published alongside the college- and career-ready standards, and the wording has not been changed. The additions around challenges, opportunities, and questions to ask yourself are all new for this resource. There is one version for literary texts and another for informational texts.
Text Analysis: Additional Supports
These resources are designed to further facilitate your work with text analysis, help you make the case for why text analysis through multiple lenses is important, and dig more deeply into the elements of culturally relevant literacy instruction.
Resource Roundup
This one-page curated collection of resources will help you:
Advice from Educators
Toolkit Advice from Educators
Educator Chat: The Toolkit’s Impact
Lesson Examples
Sample text analysis and planning guides to support instruction of anchor texts that are both complex and offer opportunities for culturally relevant pedagogy.
