Sticky Reading Comprehension

Explicit instruction/Teacher modeling

• Describe what makes up a good doodle. For example, if the text says The boy was extremely sad to discover that he was not going to be able to play both basketball and football due to a schedule conflict, the doodle could be a boy with a sad face, a basketball, a football, and a calendar.
• Instruct your students to notice key details and remember them through their own perspectives.

Guided practice/Interactive modeling

• Read the text aloud or have your students read the text aloud (depending on the text), and give the students a few minutes to compose their doodles and reflect on what they just read.
• Ask students to pair up and do a think-pair-share, using the following prompts for support and to spark in depth discussion:
  • I chose to draw ____ because ____.
  • I connect to your drawing of ____because ____.
  • Your picture reminds me of the ____ of the story.

Independent working time

• Instruct students to read a few more pages independently and compose their sketches or doodles to describe what they read on that page.
• Make sure that they do not spend longer than about 2 minutes on a sketch.

• Enrichment: Have the students draw one sticky note per chapter so that they are summarizing a larger portion of material.
• Support: Modify the lesson by having your students draw one sticky note per paragraph. Using smaller sections will help them gain practice in summarizing and comprehending text.

• At the conclusion of the reading, have your students turn back to the first page they read.
• Ask your students to retell the story based on their sketches.
• Alternatively, have your students recall the main events, characters, problems/solutions, key facts learned, sequence, etc. from the text.

• Ask the students if they feel like they were able to remember more of what they read.
• Have one student show her sketches to the rest of the class and explain the story using those sketches.