PLAN AND LABEL

Strategy Description: This strategy helps students slow down their reading process by engaging actively with the different segments of a text. Specifically, students bracket or set boundaries to a paragraph, highlight or underline important words or phrases, and write a one-to-three word description that captures the main idea of each paragraph on the margins. They then use the words identified along the margins to write a synthesis of the paragraph.

Implementation Steps / This strategy helps students’ ability to:
The first few times using this process, the teacher models all of these steps with students by sharing his/her thinking on each step out loud.
The first three steps are useful in grades 1-2. With older students, the teach may begin with Step 3.
  1. Draw a box around the title.
  2. Draw a box around any subheadings, captions, or bold words.
  3. Trace around the external sides of the paragraphs.
  4. Write ST at the end of each paragraph. (Omit this step once students have internalized the idea of stopping and thinking after each paragraph.)
  5. Read each paragraph. Stop and think of 1-3 words or a short phrase that describes what that paragraph is about and write it in the margin or on a Post-It note. If the word, phrase, or sentence is in the text of the paragraph, circle it.
  6. Use the notes on the margins to write one or more complete sentences that describe what the reading was about.
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  • Sort important from unimportant information
  • Identify and use key vocabulary
  • Understand a text
  • Identify main ideas
  • Summarize and synthesize information

Materials Needed:
  • Copies of a reading for all students. Ideally, the reading should be printed on a page with ample margins for note-taking.
  • A large copy of the reading (overhead, chart, or blackboard)

T.Gray/E2CCB Adapted from Assessment Liaisons Program, April 2006