This piece is a resource for the Teaching Tolerance article Making Numbers Count.A Rhode Island math teacher offers a new model for analyzing social issues.
Agree/disagree statements challenge students to think critically about their knowledge of a topic, theme or text. The strategy exposes students to the major ideas in a text before reading—engaging their thinking and motivating them to learn more. It also requires them to reconsider their original thinking after reading the text and to use textual evidence to support and explain their thinking.
In reading against the grain students analyze the dominant reading of a text and engage in alternative or "resistant" readings. Resistant readings scrutinize the beliefs and attitudes that typically go unexamined in a text, drawing attention to the gaps, silences and contradictions.