Sticky Notes and Reading Comprehension
By Christine Calabrese
Prevalent in most schools at this moment is the notion that students can take notes via sticky notes while reading. This is certainly fall-out from the Whole Language ~ Lucy Calkins ~ Reading & Writing Workshop. Students work in small groups and take notes as they read or they work alone and take notes on sticky notes and place the notes in the books that they read.
Perhaps this works in the best case scenario, which is, that the students have little trouble with vocabulary comprehension and general background knowledge of the book. I can see placing a sticky note here or there to remind oneself of an interesting idea or storyline, however, from what I’ve seen in my work with the students who are struggling, this sticky note business is a distracting menace, inhibiting comprehension. For a slower learner and one who doesn’t have a rich vocabulary just reading and understanding the text is enough! Reading shouldn’t be constantly interrupted with the compulsion (and I dare say this has become one) to jot down insignificant facts because one must. The idea that one needs to understand every single line in a text is just dead wrong and in fact counter productive to comprehension. One must get the big picture, that is, the gestalt of the text and to do this, taking little sticky notes for this and that without looking at the big picture is going to actually work against comprehension.
My suggestion, therefore, is to read the text through without any note taking whatsoever first, then reread and discuss in a small group important details of the text and with clarifications as needed. Finally, jot down the few details that are important.
Once again, I find the pedagogy of Lucy Calkins lacking in substance. These teachings include but are not limited to: baskets with books, rocking chairs with rugs and sticky notes. These little techniques are quite marketable to administrators yet they are leading our students and teachers down a rabbit hole of low comprehension scores.
A strong teacher, will have to discern and use the right combination of note taking to help her students and will most likely hit a wall from the administration regarding her disdain and disbelief in the most shockingly prevalent methods from Lucy Calkins. Stay strong and do what’s right for your students and that includes your slowest!
