The A-B-Cs of Coding Text

By Doug Buehl,
Madison East High School teacher
Member, Wisconsin State Reading Association

September 2001

You are lying in bed about to drift off to sleep after an eventful day jam-packed with activity. Your mind is still percolating with thoughts as you relax, and suddenly you realize that you have chanced upon an excellent idea for tomorrow’s lesson. “I should click on the light and write this down,” flickers through your consciousness, but instead, inevitably, you continue to relax and soon are fast asleep. And sure enough, the next morning you awaken with the knowledge that a great idea occurred to you the night before, but of course, you cannot recall it.

The above scenario is a frequent happenstance in our lives. As we
are engaged in a variety of routines – driving a car, jogging, eating lunch – valuable thoughts pop into our minds, but because they are ephemeral, our thoughts move on to other territory, and we soon lose them. We need a system for tracking our thinking.

This also holds true for reading comprehension. A text triggers a
host of useful connections and associations as we read along, but if we have no system for processing them, these insights may not be available to us when we reflect upon the passage and decide how to make sense of it. Struggling readers in particular have difficulty harnessing their thinking as they negotiate the terrain of a challenging text. As a result, they may conclude their reading with only a hazy outline of disjointed facts.

The strategy

Researchers have established a number of comprehension strategies that are systematically used by proficient readers as they think about a text. Proficient readers readily make connections between what they already know and new information in a passage. They buzz with questions that stoke their curiosity and guide a critical reaction to the text. They visualize what they are reading, “playing” scenes in their minds while their eyes
scan the words. Because of these strategies, proficient readers read thoughtfully – they can pick out what’s most important, they can draw inferences that may not be explicitly stated, and they can hold a discourse, with themselves and with others, about the implications of what they have read. Proficient readers are experts in monitoring their thinking while they read.

Tovani (2000) recommends teaching students a system for tracking their thinking while reading as a regular component of classroom learning.

Step 1: Teacher think-alouds can help remove some of the mystery of reading comprehension for students. Select a short piece of text that presents a challenge to you, and enlarge it so that it can be projected on an overhead transparency. Introduce the selection to the class by noting that even excellent readers occasionally encounter problematic texts. Short pieces that contain confusing segments, ambiguities, unfamiliar vocabulary, or technical subject matter make excellent choices for these think-alouds.

Read the passage out loud as the students follow along. Pause periodically to illustrate what you are thinking as you are reading. The following strategies should be included in your modeling:

• Making predictions: “I think this author is going to talk about . . .”
  
• Making connections: “This reminds me of . . .”
  
• Creating images: “I can picture what the author is describing . . .”
  
• Posing questions: “I wonder (why, how, what, who, where, etc.) . . .”
  
• Clarifying and fixing lack of understanding: “This doesn’t make sense to me. I think I should try . . .”
  

Teacher think-alouds underscore that comprehension involves active engagement with a text and constructing meaning by connecting information provided by an author with a reader’s prior knowledge and expectations.

After students have experienced several teacher think-alouds, they can practice the process themselves with partners as they tackle potentially difficult class material. The partners take turns reading a segment out loud, pausing to share their thinking and strategies as they go along.

Step 2: Prepare students to track their thinking through text coding. Coding a text involves two elements: highlighting or marking a spot in a paragraph, and then jotting a symbol in the margin to indicate the kind of thinking that was elicited at this point. The following are examples of symbols that could be used to code text:

• R – “This reminds me of . . .” to signify a connection to background knowledge or experiences.
  
• V – “I can picture this as a visual image” to signify visualizing.
  
• E – “This makes me feel . . .” to signify an emotional response to the text.
  
• Q – “I wonder . . .” to signify a question that occurred during reading.
  
• I – “I think that . . .” to signify making an inference, such as a prediction or an interpretation.
  
• ? – “I don’t understand this . . .” to signify a segment that is confusing or doesn’t make sense.
  

Again, model text coding with short selections using an overhead
projector. Emphasize that the intent of coding text is to allow a reader to return to a piece and recapture thinking that was useful for developing comprehension.

Step 3: As a variation for use with texts that cannot be marked, provide students with packs of small sticky notes, which can be affixed to the margin with a text code. In addition, Tovani (2000) recommends using Double Entry Diaries, a simple notetaking format that involves drawing a line down the center of a notebook page. The left side of the paper is reserved for phrases that are “lifted” from the text; on the right side, students place the code and jot down thoughts they had at that point in the reading.

Posted September 14, 2001