Explore Literature: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Invite students to unpack and engage with Zora Neale Hurston's novel.

Finding ways to engage students in the reading of classic texts can be difficult. Invitations to Create — a method from our Literacy Unbound initiative, which reinvigorates students and teachers through project-based, collaborative curricula developed around challenging texts, ultimately increasing student engagement and building classroom community in the process — offer engaging multimedia prompts that are designed to support students in their reading and understanding of a shared piece of literature. Each invitation offers an opportunity to reflect, analyze, and synthesize the text at hand. 

Our Invitations to Create provide key opportunities for educators to move students from talking about the text to experiencing the text. Through Invitations to Create, students can feel the story in ways that might not otherwise be possible — they can talk from within a text, and speak directly from the perspective of the characters. This process allows rich meaning-making to happen, and will allow you and your students to find ways to experience literature together.

Each invitation is focused on a meaningful quote that our team identified as a hotspot for further thinking, discussion, and creation. Additionally, the hotspots are accompanied by multimedia connections, which are meant to inspire further thinking, engagement, and curiosity for students while they're reading. ​​

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Getting the Students to Read: The Power of Annotation
​Encourage meaningful reading habits as you ask students to engage in a dialogue with their text. 

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Elevating Literacy Engagement
Inspire students to read and respond to challenging texts through multiple modalities.

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Scaffolding Complex Texts
​​Reflect on why reading can elicit such emotional responses, and focus on how you can support readers of all ages.​