Marking a Text

"Marking a Text" is an active reading strategy that students use to engage texts in all content areas. The strategy helps students focus and isolate essential information in a text, improving their comprehension and retention of reading material.

"Marking a Text" has three distinct marks: numbering paragraphs, underlining, and circling. What students circle and underline will depend on the reading purpose. A clear reading purpose will guide students to the essential information in the text. Click on the "Literacy TA Process" for information on how to plan, implement, and assess the strategy.

Texts can be overwhelming, especially for our inexperienced readers who have very little knowledge of how to strategically read a dense, complex text. "Marking a Text" will help students read more carefully and analytically as they move from paragraph to paragraph. Students who use "Marking a Text"--as it is defined here--will learn how to identify and isolate information relevant to a given reading task. Once the text has been marked, students can easily refer back to the essential information when speaking or writing about the ideas in the text. When students have a purpose for reading and have a tool to help them read, their reading stamina (or time on task) increases, their comprehension deepens, and their overall attitude toward reading improves.

Take a few minutes to explore the different features on this page. The "Literacy TA Process" and "School-wide" sections provide important details about how to teach the strategy. And don't forget to check out the strategy video. Once you are familiar with the content, think about how you might use the different elements provided on this page to enhance the teaching of this strategy.

Strategy Videos

Assess

Assessing Content Knowledge

Plan

Developing a Reading Purpose

Selecting a Text

Pacing & Supporting the Lesson

Implement

Learning the Skill

Developing the Skill

Mastering the Skill

Checking In: What do students know about the reading strategy?

When introducing or reviewing a strategy, begin by assessing students' knowledge of the strategy. Here are a few ways to assess students' prior knowledge of "Marking a Text."

Assign a reading that could be marked, have students mark it, and then collect their work and evaluate their knowledge of the strategy.
Have students write about the strategy. What do they know about the strategy? What did they learn yesterday about the strategy?
Ask specific questions about the strategy like, "What do you know about numbering paragraphs?" and "Why would readers do this?" Teachers could also ask about isolating essential information. "How do readers isolate information in a text?" Even if they don't know the name of the strategy, we can build upon their prior knowledge and name the strategy later.

Assessing the Skill

As students learn how to use the strategy, check-in with them to evaluate their progress and overall knowledge of the strategy.

Use a rubric to grade how students have marked their texts. (A strategy rubric can be found under "Downloads").
Ask questions like "What key word is introduced in the second paragraph?" or "In which paragraph does the author make a claim?" If students can quickly locate this information, they are most likely using the strategy correctly.
Walk around the room and ask students to point to information in the text that they have circled or underlined. Direct them to specific sections in the text so that you can accurately and quickly assess their knowledge of the strategy.

Assessing Content Knowledge

If we are going to invest time teaching reading strategies, we should have some idea of how the reading strategy is improving students' comprehension of a text. Use one of the strategies below to assess students' knowledge of the content.

Develop a short series of multiple choice questions. The questions should focus on the reading purpose (or task).
Craft short answer prompts that ask students to articulate--in writing--their knowledge of the content.
Engage students in a formal conversation like a Socratic seminar and assess students' knowledge through verbal performance.
Assign a brief, one page paper that asks students to account for the information you wanted them to identify in the text.

Developing a Reading Purpose

We should read the texts we assign in order to learn what the texts have to offer. If we have a good idea of how a text is written, we can develop prompts and scaffolding techniques to increase students' comprehension of the reading material. When teaching the "Marking a Text" strategy, we should include in our reading purpose some language about what students should pay attention to while reading. A sample Biology prompt has been provided below.

Read the section "Nutrition and Energy Flow" in your textbook. What do we learn about nutrition and its relationship to "Energy Flow"? Be sure to circle key vocabulary and underline definitions. (If the text cannot be marked, have students record information relevant to the reading purpose in their notes).

Selecting a Text

Before selecting a text, teachers should read it carefully in order to see what it has to offer. Ultimately, we want to choose a text that lends itself well to the teaching of a particular strategy. In this case, we want to select a text that can be marked, giving students the opportunity to practice circling and underlining essential information. What we ask our students to mark will depend on the learning outcome(s) for the unit and the reading purpose.

Pacing and Supporting the Lesson

Start slow. Teach students how to number paragraphs before circling and underlining information. Pre-select paragraphs for students to mark.
Students should rehearse "Marking a Text" all year with various types of texts.
Allow students to work together and talk about their markings.
Create opportunities for students to mark in pairs.
Check-in often.
Collect students' texts and assess their markings.
Walk around the classroom while students are reading, rereading, and marking. Assist students who are struggling and focus those who are distracted.
Give students ample time for a reading task.
Reading instruction should be done in class. Expecting students to learn this skill at home is unreasonable.

Learning the Skill

When introducing "Marking a Text," consider the following approaches.

Use the "Strategy Slides" to introduce the strategy; explain each of three marks.
Use a document camera or overhead projector to model how to number paragraphs, circle words, and underline information. Think out loud while modeling the strategy. Help students understand the thinking behind your markings.
Play the "Strategy Video" for students. Have them describe what they observed (or learned) about the strategy once the video is complete.
Ask students to circle and underline specific information in a text--giving them time to experiment--before naming the strategy.
Allow students to use a pencil while marking so that they can erase mistakes.
Focus on one mark at a time. Have students number paragraphs before reading the text for the first time. Then, have students read the text once to get familiar with the content. During their second read, students can focus on identifying key terms.
Reduce the amount of text that students reread and mark by directing them to specific paragraphs.

Developing the Skill

When deepening students' understanding of the skill, consider the following approaches:

Have students cirlce and underline during their first read.
Ask students to write about or discuss their decisions. You could ask, "What did you circle/ underline? Why?"
Have students share their markings under the document camera.

Mastering the Skill

Mastery of any skill takes time, lots of practice, and a solid understanding of how to do it. Consider applying some of the following approaches when developing students' mastery of "Marking a Text."

Give students a text with little instruction and ask them how they would mark it.
Ask students how they would use the skill in their other classes.
Teach them how the thinking behind the skill can be applied to texts that cannot be marked. For example, students are not allowed to mark textbooks, but they are expected to know the information in the text. If students understand that good readers isolate key information in texts, they will be able to extract those ideas and record them in their notes.
Teach students how to utilize this strategy when taking state and local exams.

School Wide

In order to make a strategy transferable through a department and across a school, the name of the strategy must stay the same and it must be implemented and talked about in the same way. Although reading purposes may change from class to class, unit to unit, the work behind a strategy must be predictable and consistent for our students. When a set of effective literacy strategies are implemented throughout the school day, students gain a deep knowledge of how to use the strategy, when to use it, and most importantly, why to use it. The goal for school-wide literacy, therefore, is to develop students' mastery of a select set of strategies so that they can independently and strategically employ them in rigorous academic and professional environments.

English Description

English teachers typically assign readings from textbook anthologies, novels, articles, and poems. Since "Marking a Text" is an active reading strategy that asks students to isolate essential information in the text, students need a text that they can mark. Newer textbooks provide their readings online, so students can print out readings and mark them or teachers can make class sets and have students mark the text in class. Sometimes, textbooks come with readers that can be marked. Teachers can use the stories in these readers to teach the "Marking a Text" strategy. When reading a novel, teachers can photocopy select pages from a novel that they would like students to mark. If photocopying is not an option, consider using a two-column organizer that helps students keep track of information relevant to the reading purpose. Download a two-column organizer for "Marking a Text" below.

Math Description

In mathematics, students are challenged at all levels by word problems. Because word problems are text-heavy, students struggle to know what is and what is not important. "Marking a Text" can help students isolate the essential information in word problems, helping students reduce the amount of language while focusing on the information needed to solve the problem. When marking word problems, students should...

number each sentence, making it easier to reference ideas during discussion;
circle values and [bracket] details related to the values;
and underline the question (or directive) that lets the student know what he or she is being asked to do.

Note: What you have your students mark may change from problem to problem.

Science Description

In science, textbooks are used as the primary reading resource. The essential pages could be photocopied for students so that they can mark the text while reading, or a two-column organizer could be used to organize key concepts and information relevant to the reading purpose. Often, the newer textbooks provide reading workbooks. These consumables should be used to teach the "Marking a Text" strategy.

Social Science Description

Similar to science, textbooks are used in social science as the primary reading resource. Social science teachers could photocopy essential pages in the textbook for students to mark, or they could use a two-column organizer to organize key concepts and information relevant to the reading purpose. Because newer textbooks provide their readings online, students could print out readings and mark them at home. Teachers could also make class sets and have students mark the text in class. If the textbook comes with a reading workbook, it could be used to teach the "Marking a Text" strategy.

Standardized Exams Description

When teaching test taking strategies, teach students how to mark the questions. We know that students miss a good number of questions simply because they do not understand what the questions are asking, or they don't read the questions carefully. Teaching your students to mark the test questions will help them focus on what the questions are asking.

So what do students mark? Students should box qualifying words like "LEAST," "MOST," and "BEST," circle content vocabulary and quickly write what they know about the terms, and underline other relevant information. Marking test questions can be used with every standardized exam across campus.

For those test sections that include reading passages, we should have our students use the questions that they have marked to direct their purpose for reading.

Lastly, show students how to eliminate answers that are obviously incorrect.

Examples

When students are learning how to mark a text, they tend to "over mark." That is, they circle or underline most of the text in fear that they might miss something important. In this first example, the student has circled so many words it is hard to know what is important. Over time, students will circle and underline more selectively. Click the second example to view how the same text was marked by a student who is familiar with the strategy.

In this second example, the student is both circling key terms and underlining information essential to the reading task. Although this student has circled significantly fewer words than the student in the first example, she has circled non-essential words. She has also missed some key ideas that should have been underlined. Even though there are mistakes, the student clearly understands how to use the strategy and is making good choices.

In this final example, the student has circled key terms and underlined information relevant to the reading purpose. The student can easily refer back to this page and identify the key ideas, which is one of the goals of the "Marking a Text" strategy.

Example 4

Example 5

Sharing

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<h1>Marking a Text</h1>
<p>"Marking a Text" is an active reading strategy that students use to engage texts in all content areas.  The strategy helps students focus and isolate essential information in a text, improving their comprehension and retention of reading material.</p><h2>How Do I Use The Strategy?</h2>
<p>"Marking a Text" has three distinct marks: numbering paragraphs, underlining, and circling. What students circle and underline will depend on the reading purpose. A clear reading purpose will guide students to the essential information in the text. Click on the "Literacy TA Process" for information on how to plan, implement, and assess the strategy.</p><h2>Why Is It Important?</h2>
Texts can be overwhelming, especially for our inexperienced readers who have very little knowledge of how to strategically read a dense, complex text. "Marking a Text" will help students read more carefully and analytically as they move from paragraph to paragraph. Students who use "Marking a Text"--as it is defined here--will learn how to identify and isolate information relevant to a given reading task. Once the text has been marked, students can easily refer back to the essential information when speaking or writing about the ideas in the text. When students have a purpose for reading and have a tool to help them read, their reading stamina (or time on task) increases, their comprehension deepens, and their overall attitude toward reading improves.<h2>Where Do I Start?</h2>
Take a few minutes to explore the different features on this page. The "Literacy TA Process" and "School-wide" sections provide important details about how to teach the strategy. And don't forget to check out the strategy video. Once you are familiar with the content, think about how you might use the different elements provided on this page to enhance the teaching of this strategy.<p>More about <a href="http://www.literacyta.com/literacy-skills/marking-text">Marking a Text</a></p>
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