Heinmann: Notice and Note: Click the Companion Resources tab under the book’s description.The lessons in the book target literary text, but with modifications they can also be used with expository texts. We want to foster readers who pay close attention, reflect, and who are willing to consider other responses to a text. The goal is not to search for and collect signposts as in a scavenger hunt, but to be alert for significant moments in the text. Connect this signpost to others in other parts of this novel?.Use evidence from the text to support their answers?.Remain open to other speculative answers suggested by classmates?.Offer more than one speculative answer to the anchor question?.Move to the anchor questions with or without prompting?.Explain why they think that scene represents that signpost?.Identify the scene that made them think of a signpost?.

You can assess their growth by listen to their talk over time and reading their signpost logs while asking yourself if they… Ask students to watch for this signpost while reading independently, marking those that they find, and recording a response to the anchor question.Finish reading and ask students to identify the most significant example of the signpost for the entire text, discuss the anchor question, and report to the class.Continue reading asking students to identify the signpost and discuss the anchor question.Continue reading, stopping at the next instance and asking students to talk in pairs about the anchor question.Point out what you saw that caused you to pause, ask the anchor question, and share your thoughts. Demonstrate by reading aloud a text for which the students have a copy.Explain the signpost and the anchor questions.But do what makes sense with what is being taught. When teaching the signposts, think about starting with Contrasts and Contradictions and progressing down the list to end with Memory Moment. Memory Moment: Why might this memory be important?.Again and Again: Why might the author bring this up again and again?.Words of the Wiser: What’s the life lesson and how might it affect the character?.Tough Questions: What does this question make me wonder about?.Aha Moment: How might this change things?.Contrasts and Contradictions: Why would the character act (feel) this way?.Beers and Probst have developed one anchor question for each signpost. We want students to develop reading habits and behaviors. Students must take ownership of these questions. To develop independent readers, the students must have a repertoire of a few useful questions which they apply while reading any text. The feature offers something to readers who notice and then reflect on it to help them better understand their own response, their own reading experience, and their own interpretation of the text.The feature is evident across the majority of books.The feature must be noticeable, having some characteristic that causes it to stand out from the surrounding text.In the book Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading, Kylene Beers and Robert E Probst identify additional text features, signposts, that help students read literary texts with deeper understanding. These signposts represent what students are to do as they read, notice something in the text and then stop to note what it might mean. As students learn to notice these signposts there is an increase in their use of comprehension processes: visualizing, predicting, summarizing, clarifying, questioning, inferring, and making connections. Traditionally we teach students about text features such as the importance of titles, characters’ names, setting, and the opening lines.

Signpost aha moment