Critical reading instruction

Going through some old email I found a message in which you were talking about developing a critical reading task using indices and chapter inferences (see below) and that struck me as potentially interesting. I just had my literacy, culture, and identity class look at some of the books in the field in a similar way with different ends. That is, I encouraged them to look at topics in indexes and key terms in titles as potential topic starters for a casebook assignment. In my case it was an invention activity meant to give them a broader sense of what people in this field discuss, but it could be equally useful for getting students to think about the contents of a text before reading it, a prereading set of tasks. I think it would be fruitful to return to your ideas here perhaps for next semester. Thus, my inclination to post it here.

"I've decided to integrate some critical reading
instruction into this class--basically the kind of previewing stuff we taught for
NCEE (e.g., taking our main required text and breaking them into groups in a
workshoppy way and having them trace patterns/themes in the index, make inferences
about chapters, etc.). Seems like another step in our critical reflection pedagogy.

Wanna brainstorm a little about that? Maybe we could come up with a worksheet like
the one we made on critical reflection essay writing, with examples and such. Did
you have any of your NCEE stuff handy that might be adaptable?"