Strategies for active reading and note-taking Using Metacognitive Reading Logs 1.

Provide students with a page or two of some reading that will be moderately challenging. If possible, use something the students are reading for class. Or if you want to show them how to read for other classes, you could use an excerpt from a textbook. It may not even be necessary for all students to be reading the same thing, so you could ask them to pull out something they are reading for one of their classes. 2. Purpose: Ask them to look at the reading and consider what purpose they might have for reading it. Think-Write-Pair-Share. Talk about how having a purpose helps you to know what to read for. 3. Pre-reading: Ask them what they can learn about the reading before they actually start: Title, author, layout, blurbs, headings, copyright date, author. 4. Predicting: Based on the prereading, have them predict what they think the reading will be about, or its thesis, or its main ideas, etc. 5. Reading Metacognitively: Thinking aloud and filling in the metacognitive reading log: This will work best if all the students have the same reading. You could actually do this with just a couple of paragraphs of something that you project on the screen. Review or introduce the idea of metacognitionthinking about thinkingwhich is so key to successful active learning, not just active reading. The instructor reads the first couple of paragraphs slowly aloud and pause to think aloud about what questions, predictions, problems, ideas you have while you read. Try to use the question stems from the Reading Metacognitively handout. If possible, use a document camera and model pausing to write down notes on the metacognitive log, with quotes or data from the text on the left, and the readers thoughts on the right side. (Show them how they can make their own logthis can also save on handouts. And you can put the question stems on a narrow sheet of paper as a bookmark that they can take with them.) Emphasize some of the basic moves: predicting, questioning, conecting, paraphrasing, summarizing, fixups, etc. 6. Now have them practice. They could work alone or in pairs or threes. As they practice, circulate. 7. You could wrap up the session by discussing some issues you noticed while circulating, dealing with their questions, doubts, etc. You will probably have to work on their resistance to actively writing and reacting to their reading.

Adjust this lesson as you see fit. Prepared by Dan Clark: 2 January 2014 The Metacognitive Reading Log is adapted from Schoenbach et al. Reading for Understanding, 2nd Edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012. Print.

Metacognitive Think Aloud and Reading Log Stems

Predicting: I predict . . . In the next part I think . . . Questioning: A question I have is . . . I wonder about . . . Could this mean . . . ? Connecting: This ties back to This reminds me of . . . This is like . . . Identifying a problem: Im not sure about this word I get confused here when . . . Im not sure here . . . I didnt expect . . . Using fix-ups: Ill look this word up; Ill try to figure it out from the context I will reread this part . . . Ill go back and reread the first part . . . Ill chunk out this sentence . . . Ill keep reading and come back to this . . . Paraphrasing and Summarizing: In other words . . . So what its saying here is that . . . I think the overall point is . . .

Metacognitive Reading Log Book and Chapter: Important ideas and information in the text. My Thoughts, Feelings, Questions (Use the stems questions on the back.

You can continue on the back or just draw a line down the middle of another sheet of paper.