Reading is Thinking...with Post-Its!

For Today's Tried It Tuesday, I showed my little 2nd grade friends that READING IS THINKING!! These last few weeks of school I have decided to up the anty with my 2nd grade students who are reading at an early 2nd grade level.  We have been focusing so much on reading strategies, retelling, problem/solution, making predictions, asking questions,  non-fiction strategies that I wanted to make sure I taught my little friends a little bit more about what WE do as readers!  

Most importantly, I wanted my little guys to learn that "Reading is Thinking!"  I have seen various ideas on pinterest to help teach that reading is thinking.  After compiling ideas and thinking about what my readers need at this time to help them get ready for 3rd grade, I decided to teach them about "THINK MARKS/SYMBOLS" to demonstrate what kinds of things we think about as we read.  Using THINK SYMBOLS is a great visual tool that sticks with kids as they read.  Students can stop whenever they are reading to write down what they 

are thinking about.  This quick tool works as a check-in for teachers

to see what kids are thinking about as they read.  Students

are encouraged to write down their thoughts on post-it notes

and put them on the “POST-IT” page. 

In order to activate students’ thinking processes (metacognition), It would be beneficial to teach what thinking looks like during a whole group lesson and then in guided reading.  Eventually, students should be able to carry this thinking process into their independent reading books to demonstrate their thinking.  

Students were very excited to use the fun "THINK SYMBOLS" on their post-it notes and write their thinking with the support of the sentence stems!  I was thrilled to see that students were able to independently write their thoughts down using their guided reading books!  

If you're interested in helping your readers make meaning out of what they're reading...head on over to my TpT store! Click here to purchase your own copy!

This package includes:

* A key with THINK symbols

* Posters for each THINK symbol and sentence stems

* Mini sentence stem posters for students to put on a ring.

*Page for students to place their post-it notes (thinking) about the book they are reading.

*Bookmark with Think symbols and sentence stems

*Write a letter to a character

*Parent letter from students