Using Informational Text to Teach the Great Gatsby

The Common Core State Standards initiated major changes for language arts teachers, particularly the emphasis on “informational text.” Language arts teachers were asked to shift attention toward informational texts without taking away from the teaching of literature.

Teachers, however, need to incorporate nonfiction in ways that enhance rather than take away from their teaching of literature.The Using Informational Text series is designed to help.

In this fourth volume (Volume 1: Using Informational Text to Teach To Kill a Mockingbird; Volume 2: Using Informational Text to Teach A Raisin in the Sun; Volume 3: Connecting Across Disciplines: Collaborating with Informational Text), we offer challenging and engaging readings to enhance your teaching of Gatsby.

Texts from a wide range of genres (a TED Talk, federal legislation, economic policy material, newspaper articles, and 1920s political writing) and on a variety of topics (income inequality, nativism and immigration, anti-Semitism, the relationship between wealth and cheating, the Black Sox scandal and newspaper coverage, and prohibition) help students answer essential questions about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel.

Each informational text is part of a student-friendly unit, with media links, reading strategies, vocabulary, discussion, and writing activities, and out-of-the-box class activities.

Audrey Fisch is Professor of English and Coordinator of Secondary English Education at New Jersey City University where she has taught for over twenty years.

Susan Chenelle is Supervisor of Curriculum and Instruction at University Academy Charter High School in Jersey City, New Jersey, where she taught English and journalism for several years.