An effective monitoring strategy to help track thinking.

Text coding is a way for students to track their thinking while reading. It entails marking the text and recording what their thinking either in the margins or on Post-it notes.  As students make connections and ask questions in response to what is read,  students are better able to monitor their comprehension and enhance their long-term understanding of the material.

1. Introduce the strategy by explaining its purpose.  Make sure students know that this will help them keep track of their thinking as they read.

2. Choose a couple of text codes that you want to focus on in the beginning and explain them to the class.  You can introduce more as they become more comfortable with this strategy.  Create a poster of the symbols to post in your classroom or give each student a copy of the text codes.

3. Model the strategy by reading aloud a text and pause to think aloud as you add text codes.  For example, "This part made me think of the text we read last week, so I'm going to write 'T-T,' the symbol for text to text connection.  Now I'm going to write a few words about my connection."   Be sure to pause and think aloud multiple times.  It is important for students to see that you would have multiple text codes with notes on a page.  When you finish reading, model how to look back at the text codes to remind yourself of what was read.