Dig into Reading: Reading Strategies

Post-Its Notes Reading Strategy

Hi All, 

Today I will be talking about reading strategies! Developing effective reading strategies is important for students because reading is a part of every day life, that is students are constantly being bombarded by all sort of mediums (text, film, radio, graphics etc). As such, they need to have the skills to be able to dissect what a particular medium is trying to tell them and then make an informed opinion on that resource. One of the reading strategies that we discussed in class was the idea of using post-it notes when reading. I remember that I used this strategy in high school, however I felt that it made me very disorganized—I attributed this to me not knowing how to use post-it notes properly. So, I decided to go on Pinterest to find different ways of using post-it notes in the reading process. I found the resource below which I think is a very organized and an effective way to use post-it notes;  the resource (click on picture) is a post-it note chart that students can refer to while they are reading. 

                                         ELA Teacher. (2013). Readers make note of. Retrieved October 23, 2015.

Connections to the Ontario Language Arts Curriculum p.10-12:

Students will:

1. read and demonstrate an understanding of a variety of literary, graphic, and informational

texts, using a range of strategies to construct meaning;

2. recognize a variety of text forms, text features, and stylistic elements and demonstrate

understanding of how they help communicate meaning;

3. reflect on and identify their strengths as readers, areas for improvement, and the

strategies they found most helpful before, during, and after reading

The way that this resource is set-up allows for a teacher to manipulate the resource whichever way they prefer. So, I can use it in a way where students can go through each reading process: pre-reading, during reading and after reading. 

Pre-reading: The student begins to question the reason why they are reading the material for example: What is the issue? By doing this the students can draw upon prior knowledge.

During Reading: Students identify the main characters, the setting, actions of characters or unknown words. Also, students can use this chart to make predictions on how they think the story will end. Finally, the chart allows the students to note down question that they might have about a particular reading resource—this is helpful because it gets students thinking actively while they read and also increases students reading comprehension of the resource. 

After-Reading: This chart helps students reflect on what they just read by asking the student to identify and analyze the various issues that were discussed in the reading. Next, it asks the student to give an opinion of the reading for example: I liked how the author…, I think…, In my opinion…; this is important because it develops the students critical thinking skills and allows them to have a deeper connection with the text. Also, the chart has a post-it for making connections: text to text connections, text to life connections and text to world connection. This is very important because it allows for students to really expand their thinking beyond the text. Finally, the chart has a post-it note for learnings which allow for students to reflect on what they learned from the text which could be a particular word, concept or idea. 

I think that this resource can be used for any grade level— of course it would have to be tweaked in accordance with the various expectations at each level. Also, this type of resource can be used by traditional learners or digital learners. That is, traditional learners can simply make their own post-it chart using real post-its whereas digital learners can use a digital post-its to do the same thing. I have created my own digital post-it chart on a social justice book I read earlier this term: Gandhi’s Glasses. I used the online tool Linoit (http://linoit.com). I created this chart in the point of view of the student. Below is my own post-it chart:

I found this to be a very meaningful process because it allowed me to reflect on the book and its message.