Annolighting Text
Annolighting is a technique which helps students discover the main ideas and key concepts in a text by highlighting the most essential words and writing marginal notes to aid in comprehension, analysis, and interpretation. The result is a distillation of the essential elements and message of the text.
Choral Reading
Choral Reading helps students develop fluency, comprehension, and sight vocabulary. This is an important step to understanding the human emotion and subtle meanings in text. Student pairs or groups read parts of a passage in unison alternating fast and slow lines, loud and soft lines, high and low voices, and emphasizing key words or phrases. This works especially well with poetry and other rhythmic passages. Choral Readings are repeated, as if preparing for a performance, until mastery.
Cloze Reading
A Cloze Reading activity can be used to help students construct meaning from a text and evaluate their comprehension of the text content. Delete words using a word count formula such as every fifth word (or other criteria) from a portion of the text and replace the deleted words with blanks. Students fill in the blanks with the word they think fits the meaning of the sentence. This strategy can be used with or without a word bank.
Column Notes
Column notes help students organize information about important content into relevant categories. Traditionally, the left column lists the items under investigation such as U.S. Presidents. Columns to the right provide space for students to record details about various curricular topics such as “challenges” and “accomplishments.”
Content Inventory
A content inventory is a form of analyzing the the content in a text. For example, a teacher may highlight all of the verbs used in a text and organize the verbs by verb tenses so that she knows what verb tenses English Language Learners may need to review prior to reading the text. The Content inventory may ask students what information they know about the features of non-fiction texts such as the Table of Contents, index and captions under pictures. The content inventory presents a summary of a particular feature of a text.
Foldable Books
Dinah Zike invented hundreds of educational manipulatives (foldable books) that are used to help students remember concepts.
Graphic Organizers
Graphic organizers derive their name from the fact that students organize thoughts and information in a graphic format such as charts, webs, chains, maps, and sketches. They can be used for a variety of purposes including helping students compare and contrast; categorize, classify, sequence, evaluate, rank, analyze story elements, and collect evidence to support an opinion.
Opinion – Proof Chart
This two-column chart allows students to personally engage with the text while challenging them to develop persuasive reasoning skills. Students are asked to record an opinion in the left column and, in the right column, to record evidence from the reading that supports their opinion.
More about Opinon-Proof Charts
SCIM-C
SCIM-C was designed by to help students develop the skills of historical inquiry, critical thinking, and intellectual flexibility. (Hicks, Doolittle, Ewing, 2004) Using a fluid “frames” approach, students read the source then perform the SCIM-C task.
Three Minute Pause Summarization
The 3-Minute Pause helps students process information by providing a short break during which they summarize new content, connect new content to prior knowledge, and are free to ask clarifying questions. This strategy was suggested by Ralph Tyler and is currently promoted by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins.