Significant Quotes
Who said it? What is the context? and Why is this quote significant? may seem like an archaic exercise in today’s educational landscape, but the practice provides quick and valuable feedback on students’ critical reading skills and helps students develop an understanding of what makes a quote or piece of text “significant”. First, the activity isolates a student’s knowledge of the work from their understanding and interpretation of it. This can be a helpful starting point when coaching students towards new learning goals. Second, the task indirectly teaches students how to identify important information in a work through modeling and reflection.
Process
- Choose a few significant quotes or isolated pieces of text that are significant to the work/body of work as a whole.
- Ask students to respond to the following questions:
- Who said it? (Or for image-based texts: Where does it appear?)
- What is the context in which the quote is said? (Or for image-based texts: What is the context of the image?)
- Why is the quote/image significant?
- Collect responses, or direct students to partners/small groups to share.
- Ask students to reflect in pairs, small group, as a class or in their portfolios: What do we notice about “significant quotes” (or images)? What did these quotes (or images) have in common (if anything)? Was there anything notable about the way they were written or presented?
Credits
Image by Words as Pictures from StockSnap
