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.
- Draw a box around the title.
- Draw a box around any subheadings, captions, or bold words.
- Trace around the external sides of the paragraphs.
- Write ST at the end of each paragraph. (Omit this step once students have internalized the idea of stopping and thinking after each paragraph.)
- 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.
- Use the notes on the margins to write one or more complete sentences that describe what the reading was about.
- 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