Week 6: Writing-to-read and Reading-to-write activities for our group's article

Teaching the Article:

Who Needs Marriage? A Changing Institution

Objectives: Have students connect and relate their own perspectives to the primary text and to related supplementary texts, so that they become aware of the relationship between their own responses and the sociocultural influences that shape perceptions of marriage and inequality. Guided by McCormick's idea that "it is only when students begin to see that their subjectivities are part of a larger cultural framework that they can develop the skills necessary to evaluate critically the particular positions they take up" (171), our unit will emphasize the socioeconomic context for marriage today. In doing so, we can encourage students to develop a deeper perspective on the broader topic and to critically explore and write about their own responses to it.

Before Reading:

• Prereading: Have a class discussion to activate schema related to students’ views of marriage, and students’ views of the socioeconomic status of married and unmarried people: ask key questions, free-write, and discuss. 

• Previewing: Look over the article and predict, based on the title and first few paragraphs, what it will be about and what it will argue.

• KWL+: Establish questions that you would like to have answered as you read the article, based on your preview of it.

During Reading: 

• Annotate the article as you read; in class, groups can annotate one passage together and translate their annotated passage into a paragraph (moves students from reading to writing stages).

• Keep a dialectical journal that records and responds to quotes. Look for contradictions within the article (based on McCormick) and try to assess why these contradictions exist or what they demonstrate about our society.

•  Fill out a graphic organizer that presents key themes from the reading (themes could be: marriage today versus in the past; socioeconomic inequality and marriage; marriage and the American Dream). Then come up with a thesis statement that synthesizes 2 or 3 of these themes, which you can use in your essay.

After Reading: 

• Reflect on what you read and your annotations; make inferences based on them. After reflecting on the issues raised by the article, identify 2-3 new (yet related) topics that you would like to read about and find 1-2 articles on these topics through your own research ("activate new reading"). 

• We can also assign related reading materials, asking students to compare the Time article with a recent case study showing the socioeconomic inequality that exists between single-parent and married families: Two Classes, Divided by 'I Do'. I also think that expanding the debate by incorporating both right-wing and liberal perspectives could be useful. See: Marriage Reduces Child Poverty (Heritage Foundation) and Marriage is not antidote to poverty (CNN)

• Class discussion: does your view of marriage match the dominant views discussed in the article? Why or why not? Does your view of/experience with marriage correspond with society’s dominant views of marriage? (brings together Expressivist and Sociocultural models)

• Synthesize key themes and develop a thesis statement based on these themes. Use evidence from your own views/experiences as well as evidence from the articles you researched and the primary text to support a thesis that synthesizes these ideas.