I hate study guides, fill-in-the-blank worksheets that serve as defacto crossword puzzles. Find the missing answer, the one right answer, by hook or crook, usually during the class period before its due.

So I’m constantly on the hunt for new active reading strategies. The other day I decided to create a simple form that you can make in class that would allow a student to look at ANYTHING new: paintings, videos, stories, historical documents, lecture… anything and take the student from understanding the material to creating something new that will become a new part of the global conversation about that topic. It looked like this.

I specifically designed this so that any student or person could use this as a framing and creation tool using just a single piece of paper. For now I’m calling it the M.U.N.I. (Managing and Understanding New Information doc link) You get on the MUNI by taking a single piece of paper…

and folding it into sixteen squares. You do that by folding it in half like this.

Then have the students use the folded lines to create the divisions and then have them label the M.U.N.I steps/stops.

What I love about this process is that it includes the following skills:

• Summary/Main Idea (Very Common Core)
• My Take= Creating a Claim About The Topic (CCSS again)
• What Questions Do You Have [A nod to the Question Formulation Technique]
• What If? What if is a powerful innovation question.
• Connections (Connected reading is more powerful than close reading)
• Connections to self (Relevance)
• How Might We? (An important part of the Design Thinking Process)
• The Global Conversation (What can our students create and share to become a part of the conversation around a topic.

This is just version 1.0 of M.U.N.I. feel free to upgrade the engine or interior. I’d love to hear your ideas. Here is a link to version 1.5, it’s almost there.

Here is a link to Mr. Ziebarth’s update to the M.U.N.I. I like it, if you’ve adapted it, please let me know.

Here is an example of a completed MUNI project for Animal Farm. It’s hilarious.

Here is another example, this student wrote a blog post on rebellion for her MUNI.

Here is a MUNI from Animal Farm about the luxury of sleeping on a bed.

Animal Farm and “Destination Selfie”

These all included an in class presentation so some of the slides might be just a little confusing, but I think you can get the sense of what we are trying to do.

The shortlink to this page is: bit.ly/munisheet