Select a set of coherent primary source texts  in line with your identified literacy and learning goals. This should include an anchor text and a set of supporting texts that can be strategically sequenced to develop students’ knowledge and skills.

1. Choose an Anchor Text

An anchor text is the central text around which a lesson or unit is built. This may be, for example, a narrative piece, a data set, or an image. Students will engage with this anchor text through out the lesson or unit, using it as base upon which to build skills and knowledge. 

To Do:

Choose 1 anchor text for each lesson or set of lessons you would like to create. 

• Look for texts can help your students reach the learning goals you want to emphasize.
• Look for texts that are meaningful, rich and worthy of study.
• Consider texts that are typical for your discipline (e.g., data sets for science).
• Evaluate the texts for text complexity, and choose appropriately challenging texts. 

Reference Resources

• See a list of texts that other teachers have chosen as as anchor texts.
• Review a guide to selecting texts for teaching and assessing.
• Review a collection of tools on text complexity.

2. Choose Supporting Texts

Supporting texts should help students to successfully move through the learning objectives for your lesson, and can help to build the knowledge necessary to access the anchor text in your lesson. They can be framing texts, background texts, or texts that complement your anchor text.

To Do:

Examine your anchor text and map it to your learning objectives. Identify which components of your learning objectives that the anchor text will help you to meet, and where there may be gaps in terms of helping your students meet the objectives. Also consider:

• Whether there are learning objectives that will be addressed through your anchor text, but that you may want to strengthen through supporting texts.
• Whether there are background concepts that students will need to master in order to access the anchor text, and that supporting texts can help your students to acquire.

To Do:

Choose a series of supporting texts, based on your analysis above, that will help your students master the necessary concepts, skills and knowledge needed to meet the lesson's learning goals. Look for combinations of texts that support multiple intelligences and learning modalities.

Reference Resource

• See a list of texts that other teachers have chosen as as supporting texts.

3. Build & Organize the Text Set

To Do:

Consider how the anchor text and the supporting texts should be sequenced within the lesson to develop necessary skills. Ask: How should the texts be connected and sequenced to develop students’ knowledge and skills in line with identified learning goals?

Reference Resources

• Review a guide to creating text sets.
• See a text set created by K-5 teachers for a unit on technology and change. 
• See a text set created by 6-12 teachers for a unit on human rights.

To Do:   

Save your anchor source and supporting sources to My Items in OER Commons. Organize them in to folders. 

Reference Resource

• View the video tutorial below for step by step instructions. Saving resources to My Items begins at 1:20
  

4. Move to Next Step

Now that you have identified your text set, start designing your lessons using the Create Lessons module, and embedded Primary Source Project Exemplar template.

Reference Collection

Not ready for the next step yet? Review our Text Selection collection to learn more about selecting and sequencing text sets.