Reading Strategies

Scaffolding Students' Interactions

with Texts

Parallel Note-taking

Reading

Outcomes

Video
Resource

Link to Other
Reading Strategies

Tools for

Reading, Writing,

& Thinking

ELA
Home Page

Use this Strategy:

Before Reading

During Reading

After Reading

Targeted Reading Skills:

· Recognize and use text features to aid comprehension

· Evaluate validity, accuracy and usefulness of information by distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant material

· Use textual evidence to substantiate interpretive claims

What is it?

This strategy takes Structured Note-taking (Smith & Tompkins, 1988) a few steps farther by adding the CEI strategy (claim, evidence and interpretation) to the process. It requires students to first identify the organizational structure of an informational text and then take notes on essential ideas and information in the text using a structure that parallels the organization of the text.

What does it look like?

Step 1: Teach students to recognize the seven most common organizational patterns as identified in the work of Marzano et al. (1997) and Jones, Palincsar, Ogle, and Carr (1987).  The seven structures are listed below along with their defining characteristics and a few applicable graphic organizers from Tools for Reading, Writing and Thinking:

• Chronological sequence: organizes ideas and information in the time sequence that events occurred (see Event Mapping, Academic Notes)

• Compare and contrast: organizes information on a topic in terms of similarities and differences (see Compare and Contrast, Comparison Notes)

• Concept / definition: organized by beginning with a general idea of a person, place, thing, event, or abstraction and then delineates its elements, characteristics, and/or examples (see Classification Notes, Main Idea Notes, Metaphor Analysis)

• Description: this pattern paints a word picture of a person, place, thing, or event; the facts and details do not have to be given in any particular order

• Episode: this pattern organizes a large amount of information about an event or time period; it may include: specific times and places, people involved, sequence of events and their possible causes and consequences (see Interactive Notes, Event Mapping)

• Generalization: general statements are supported with specific details or examples (see Pyramid Notes, Academic Notes, Classification Notes, Cornell Notes, Inductive Main Idea)

• Process/cause-effect: tracks a series of steps leading to an outcome or product; or explains a causal sequence (see Cause and Effect, Process Notes)

Once students are able to examine and identify the organizational pattern of a text, it will help provide a framework for their understanding. 

Step 2: To help students develop their skills at recognizing the above organizational patterns, provide students with various graphic organizers for note taking that will help them to organize the information they are gathering from the text they are reading.  Choose passages from the text they are currently reading in class or for homework; it is important they practice these strategies in authentic ways.  Refer to Tools for Reading, Writing and Thinking for several options for each of the above categories.  Using the graphic organizers to take notes during and after reading, students will be learning different strategies for processing the information given in different types of texts.

Step 3:  Once students have developed their skills in note taking that mimics the text structure, the next step is to organize their ideas into a thesis or claim about the text, evidence to support the claim, and an interpretation of the claim (see a CEI graphic organizer).  In the process, they should be able to choose the most significant information from their parallel notes to support that thesis or claim.  Students can indicate their choices by highlighting, circling, or starring the chosen details. 

As always, it is crucial that the graphic organizers be used as a form of scaffolding to reach a goal that goes beyond the organizer itself; the goal might be a piece of writing, preparation for a discussion or Socratic seminar, etc.  We need to be explicit about the fact that using these tools will train our minds to automatically recognize text structures and organize information while reading, even when we are not using a graphic organizer.  In short, it is a way to become a more skilled reader of informational texts, something we all grapple with in this age of information!

• It is important that this process be carefully adapted for complexity and pacing for a chosen grade level.

• It is probably helpful to start with the graphic organizers from our web site, but once you are comfortable with this process, it is great to model individualized organizers that you have personally modified or created for a particular reading.  It may take into account some unique or complex elements of text structure the students have not encountered before.

• One of the most powerful adaptations is when some, or all, of your students feel comfortable enough to design and use their own graphic organizers to reach a desired goal for their interaction with a text.