Digging Deeper

Readers use THINKMARKS to show their thinking

How fun was this lesson!?  It happened over a few days, reading our National Geographic Explorer magazine.  On the first day, we talked about the sticky notes on the left side (the rest of the page was blank) and talked about various books we have read as a class (Holes, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane) and talked about parts we could mark with a sticky note.  In our next session, I posed the question “What about NONFICTION?” and was thrilled to hear the conversation that followed.  They had great ideas (our Surprising Fact sticky was a great suggestion!) and worked hard to compare fiction and nonfiction text – and how they would change up their sticky note when reading nonfiction.  On our third day, we brought part of the Nat Geo article into the mix.  As we read, we talked about things that jumped out (vocabulary words, cool facts, things we didn’t know, etc.) and marked our findings with our sticky note flags.  We also used a highlighter which is a fantastic tool to use when digging deeper into text.  Obviously, it’s not always possible, but when viable, it’s awesome.  These lessons are a way to focus on something called Close Reading.  Close Reading requires students to get involved with the text they are reading – noticing features about the piece they may have overlooked before.  Having kids interact with the text gives them an opportunity for them to learn how to slow down and absorb more meaning in the texts they read.  This isn’t something we do for every text, but a strategy we will be able to use throughout our lives to understand what we read and use the information gained in a variety of ways.