• Do you understand the reading?  If not all of it, how much of it do you understand?  What clarifications are needed?  What “dumb questions” need clearing up before we can go on to a more complex grasp of the reading?

 

• What in the reading strikes you as being accurate, being true?  What do you question?  What concepts seem valuable as a way of helping to stretch our awareness of what is true?

 

• Where in the article does the author provide details or concrete examples that help to make the concepts more vivid?  If the author doesn’t do so, can you? Or can we, as a class?

 

• How is this reading relevant to the learning goals for the course, or to learning generally?

 

• How does the reading take us beyond themes and concepts you’ve encountered before?  Where does the reading offer greater depth, a closer look at the complexities of a concept, a revealing discussion of why the concept matters? 

 

• Does the reading consider alternative viewpoints, or present a viewpoint unfamiliar to you?  If you were someone else (with different views, different experiences), how would you respond to the reading?

 

• How do the ideas in the reading hold together?  What is the underlying logic?