Reading

Notice and note: Signposts

Students will answer the question what does it mean to read closely and to notice details in a text? They will explore a set of strategies called signposts that can support them when they are developing their understanding of literary elements such as plot, setting, character development, conflict, theme and symbolism. Through class novels, video and teacher think-alouds students will learn that they can actively notice clues and from these consider questions that allow them to develop their thinking around a text.

Key questions:

• How do readers build understanding of a text through noticing and referring to specific details?

• How can specific details help readers develop their understanding of ideas in a text?

Students will be taught to pay close attention as they read, assuming that all details matter, accumulating and synthesizing a tremendous amount of information. Students will learn to read carefully to study and notice things about the main characters in their books, growing ideas about them from their actions, words, relationships and changes. Students will read across their novels, noticing patterns. These signposts will also help children to write more detailed 'post-its' as a strategy to show their thinking.

Books tend to show authors behaving in fairly familiar and consistent ways in all their writing. Writing habits in one book tend to appear in others. For example, a character will face trouble but then they will experience a moment that reveals something that sets them on the path to resolving their problem. Once this typical literary 'behaviour' is recognised for the first time, students will be able to spot it in other books too. 

Next unit... Social Issue Partnerships