Step Inside: Reading Like a Reader

Student's annotations 

I find the skill of annotating a difficult skill to teach. Maybe it’s because I don’t remember ever being taught to annotate as a student, or perhaps it’s because there are so many different approaches to teaching annotating. If you do a web search on “Annotating a text,” you’ll get hundreds of results with different checklists and coding systems. However, there is one common thought across the board: readers annotate to show their thinking and to dig deeper into the text.  

As stated in my previous blog post (linked here), I took a couple of weeks to teach how to annotate explicitly and the purpose behind the practice. We practiced thinking aloud before we made our marks on the page. I found that this helped them to see that they were having thoughts while reading. After doing this with a couple of readings, I introduced our annotation marks two at a time. Per Peha’s research, I introduced: predicting, questioning, inferring, feeling, connecting, and evaluating. My students had a straightforward understanding of how to predict, question, feel, and connect to their reading. But when it comes to inferring and evaluating they have a difficult time noticing this in their thinking.

Below are Peha’s definitions of inferring and evaluating: 

Infer. Readers figure out things about what they read that aren’t actually written in the text. There’s almost always more to a story than just the words on the page. Often, writers leave “clues” that good readers can use to discover important information.

Evaluate. Readers make judgments while they read. Is this good? If so, what’s good about it? Do I like it? Why? Should I keep reading or should I put this down and get something else? Readers are finicky, impatient, judgmental. The evaluations they make help them decide whether or not what they are reading is valuable and, if so, how they might use it.

After reading with my students and questioning them to check for understanding, I could tell that they are capable of making inferences and evaluating the text. The challenge was getting them to notice when they were doing this thinking while reading. 

At this time, I turned to my FAVORITE professional development book- “Making Thinking Visible.” There are over 25 routines in this book, and every time I introduce a new one, it becomes my new favorite. My new favorite is the routine: Step Inside. This routine is perfect for getting my students to read like a reader, infer, and evaluate. As explained on the Visible Thinking website, “This routine helps students to explore different perspectives and viewpoints as they try to imagine things, events, problems, or issues differently. In some cases, this can lead to a more creative understanding of what is being studied.” During this routine, students are asked to step inside another mindset and answer four guiding questions.

Here is how I introduced “Step Inside” to my students:

1. For the first time exploring this routine, I decided to use the class novel that we had just finished, “A Long Walk to Water.” As suggested in the “Making Thinking Visible,” I use the questions to “Step Inside” in a whole group setting to explore the main character’s (Salva) life. We used the novel so we could refer back to the text and use textual evidence to support our inferences and evaluations. 
2. Next, I had my students work in their homogeneous groups and gave them a secret character from the novel. Differentiation trick- I strategically gave my highest group a character that had little evidence to refer back to, so they had to collaborate and discuss more than the other groups to complete this thinking. Similarity, I have my ELs grouped together and gave them another main character, so they had a bunch of text evidence to support their thinking. *Note- I have students groups in 4 different ways. I change the groups students work with depending on the task. 
3. Students worked for 15-20 minutes to answer the four questions together. They had to use text evidence, infer, evaluate, and defend their thinking. And the best part was they did all of this with a level 1 voice because they didn’t want the other groups to hear their secret character (haha). 
4. When they completed the guiding questions, they created a modified “I Am Poem” as the character. Their goal was to give clear enough clues so that the rest of the class could guess who their character was. 
5. One spokesperson from each group shared their “I Am Poem,” and the rest of the class guessed who their character. During this time, students were using their knowledge of the text, inferring, and evaluating answers and information. Of course, I made sure to point that out and ruin the fun.

The thing I love about this routine the most is that it can be modified for so many different activities and contents. For example, I’m using it next week in social studies when we study the development of complex cultures with early humans. I’ll be using a picture from the My World textbook, and instead of giving the students a secret character, they will all look through the lens of an archaeologist. Depth and complexity while reading like a reader! 

Follow along to see how our reading and writing transforms, 

Jenni Merry