Holding+Thinking

Holding Thinking
Cris Tovani has great advice for note-taking, which she describes as a way of holding thinking. This strategy will help students remember what they read and ensure that they are understanding as they read.

Students may either annotate directly in their own books or use sticky notes. Tovani is clear about giving students guidelines as they begin to hold their thinking while reading. She advises:


 * Write the thinking next to the words on the page that cause you to have the thought.
 * If there isn't room on the text to write, draw a line showing the teacher where the thinking is written.
 * Don't copy the text; respond to it.
 * Merely underlining text is not enough. Thinking about the text must accompany the underlining.
 * There is no one way to respond to text. Here some possible options: Ask a question, make a connection to something familiar, give an opinion, draw a conclusion, make a statement.

This note-taking strategy meant to promote deeper thinking also could be used to follow a speech. For example, I could pass out copies of the "I Have A Dream" speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., so that students could write on the text while listening to the speech.