Foregrounding the Metacognition
Keep the norm of making thinking visible with the task of identifying similarities and differences. This activity is not meant to be a “fill in the worksheet” activity – but an authentic meaning-making process of sorting and reasoning through ideas.

Keeping reading “fresh”
Revisiting the RSL and encouraging students to exercise existing strategies and invent new ones that support their comprehension prevents this list from becoming an ancient artifact that is only used the first couple of weeks of school. This is a great opportunity to identify the expertise students have been developing up this point in the strategies they use to make sense of text and to encourage the invention and exercise of new ones as they see fit.

Documenting students’ ideas
There is limited space on this page for documenting students’ ideas. One way to consolidate students’ ideas is to do this overhead or document camera, or have students listen for ideas that are new to each student.