Authentic learning across the content areas

The In2Books curriculum is learner-centered and authentic, providing students with relevant and personally engaging learning experiences:
  • Students experience reading, writing and thinking for a real life purpose by corresponding with an intellectual mentor (e.g. and adult pen pal) who reads the same books that they do.
  • In each curriculum unit, students select (in consultation with their teachers) diverse and thought provoking books of different genres.
  • Teachers model cognitive strategies through various small group and large group activities in literacy and subject-matter instruction.
  • Students learn both the subject area and literacy skills as they study a domain (e.g., social studies or science) or genre (e.g., biography, fiction and folktales).
  • Students and their mentors write to each other about the important themes and life issues in the books, asking and answering thought-provoking questions.
  • Students learn about and use as models:
    • Adults who incorporate reading and writing in their everyday lives
    • Adults’ feelings about family, work and the community.
    • Adults’ thinking and writing in the pen pal letters.
    • The experiences of characters in the In2Books books they read.
  • Students experience membership in a virtual community of people of various ages who are interested in books and ideas.