Triangulated Texts

K-12 teachers, let's be honest with each other. Teaching kids can be terribly boring. This is especially true when you find yourself teaching and re-teaching the same topics, the same way, for many years because of circumstances beyond your control.

I'll go a step further to say something a bit controversial. Teaching K-12 can make you stupid.

Before you started teaching, you were a living encyclopedia of all sorts of scholarly and social topics. You were younger, sprier, wittier, more entertaining. You felt almost invincible in your personal brilliance. You oozed confidence. You, my dear, were a star.

This is not me suggesting that you are any less of a star today. I am merely saying that teaching rote knowledge repetitively--especially in a teach-to-the-test environment--can make you horribly dimwitted.

You start to forget things you could recite in your sleep when you began. You get out of touch with modern criticisms of classic texts because you're too busy grading rewrites. You lose your favorite teaching resources. You become tired.

Here's where an old teaching strategy that was recently given a fancy name can help you and your students be happier campers.

The what and why of triangulated text use is simple:

Instead of lecturing, you become a pre-researcher for your students. You select a number of print and non-print sources that you will submit to students (either student groups or individuals), and then THEY become secondary researchers, using the sources you provided to gather new knowledge.

Teachers often provide guiding questions with each piece of text to make sure that students are gathering the right materials for concept discussion.

Here's why text triangulation is good for you and your students: 

First, you get to be the researcher and reader that you so love to be. Lesson planning needn't become something you dread doing. Rather, it can be an opportunity for you to refresh and even rethink concepts you're teaching from the students' perspective. As you gather the texts you will submit to your students and plan guiding questions, you will reconnect to the student in you, which is good for career longevity.

Second, your students become researchers who are not bound by the availability (or lack thereof) of technology. As much as we love computers that operate at warp speed, some schools only have two slow computers in each classroom. Some schools only allot one computer per teacher. Some schools barely have a copier. When you provide your students with printed sources and research questions, you can teach the same skills of citing sources and searching the text without worrying about whether or not the Net will be down today.

Third, learning becomes an independent investment. Suddenly you are the facilitator and not the preacher to a captive audience. Instead of exerting so much teaching energy, you can walk the room and become an assistant to your children as they weave themselves through the concept. You can spend time meeting students' needs according to their reading abilities also because you are not the center of attention.

In short, you can teach one text in twenty minutes, or your kids can search five texts in twenty-five minutes with the right pre-research and planning. You come away looking like the genius you are and the students are one step closer to being more like you. Also, you will have provided the children with a number of schema related to the concept, which leads to more retention.

You don't have to believe me. Just try it ONCE. Instead of lecturing for thirty minutes on the Civil War, give your students one Civil War letter, one Civil War poem, one Civil War news article, one excerpt of a Civil War short story and a 10-minute Civil War Youtube video. Pre-plan the guiding questions for each text (print and non-print) and establish your grouping preferences (individual, pairs, etc). Then, turn them loose and walk the room.

Listen to the conversations, engage yourself in their thinking processes, and I promise you that you will fall in love with teaching again in a way you never thought you would. Try, just ONCE.

Primary Sources and Promethean Boards,

-Ms. Moss