Notice and Note Signposts

6th graders have been hard at work reading and writing informational text. When reading nonfiction, the role of the reader is to be an active thinker. There is a lot of information being presented while reading and it's important for students to have strategies to organize and make sense of all they are taking in. Something that we have incorporated this year to help students deepen their understanding of nonfiction is Notice and Note Signposts.

There are 5 signposts, each presenting a new strategy that students can add to their toolbox in order to best understand a piece of text. The 5 nonfiction signposts are Contrasts and Contradictions, Quoted Words, Word Gaps, Numbers and Stats, and Extreme Language. When students come to one of these while reading, they need to notice it and note the author's purpose for including it.

We have spent time on each signpost during our reading unit in order to collect research on a topic and write about it. We practiced finding and discussing a signpost in a text together, then students practiced analyzing each signpost while researching. They also included each in their own informational writing.

In order for students to see how all these pieces fit together, this week we are reading a Junior Scholastic article that closely ties in with our studies on teen activism and the service-learning we are doing this year.

After reading the article once to get the gist and share initial thinking, students went through a rotation to search for each signpost in the article. Tomorrow we will discuss the information pulled from the article.