See how text coding supports increased comprehension from grades 3-12.

1. Text Coding:
Combatting Mad
Highlighter’s
Disease
Terry Atkinson, East Carolina University
Kenneth McKee, Buncombe County Schools
Jen Zagiba, Wake County Schools

2. Outcomes
● Acquire specific text-coding strategies for helping
students navigate complex text.
● Describe how text-coding supports monitoring
comprehension.
● Contrast text-coding from highlighting.
● Discuss how text-coding supports close reading within
their classrooms and disciplines.

3. Highlighting

4. Monitoring is the KEY to
Comprehension!

5. Text Coding: A Scene from the Classroom
Thinking Notes in High School English

6. Engaging Metacognitively
“In the marginalia, too, we talk only to
ourselves; we therefore talk freshly--boldly--
originally--with abandonment--with conceit.”

7. Why Text Coding?
“Giving students...opportunities to monitor their own use of
strategies is important…text coding works well and is
especially effective with students who argue that annotating
a text takes too much time and disrupts the flow of their
reading.”
“Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction”
(Ogle & Lang, 2011)

8. Reading A Primary Document
The Gettysburg Address (CCSS RH1,RH2)
? -- Questions
C -- Context
D -- Democratic Ideals
R -- Relevance to Today

9. Utilizing Anchor Charts

10. Evolution of the Strategy

11. Student Ownership

12. How do we get to independence?

13. Impact on Motivation
“School ought to be a place where you go to
develop a passion for learning-for a lifetime of
learning.”
Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading
(Beers & Probst, 2012)

14. Supportive of Close Reading
“We hope that learning and staying alert for the
signposts will inculcate a habit of paying close
attention, a readiness to slow down and reflect,
and a willingness to hear and explore other
responses to a text.”
(Beers & Probst, 2012)

15. Supporting Disciplinary Literacies

16. Across the Disciplines
Life of Pi in English II, Chris Gilbert)

17. Across the Disciplines
Hammurabi’s Code in World History, Wendy Segars

18. Across the Disciplines
AP Statistics Textbook, Tony Sapp

19. Across the Disciplines
(Leadership Skills in ROTC, Colonel Rick McConoughey)

20. What about Digital Texts?
Google Docs Comments and Newsela
“NEWSELA + Google Docs = Differentiated,
Collaborative Reading”
(Holland, 2014)

21. Text Coding and Group Discussion
? = Questions
- = Disagreements
! = Surprising Ideas
+ = Most Important Ideas

22. Protocol for Discussion
One member can take notes and lead the discussion.
Organize your discussion by column.
1. Everyone introduces themselves.
2. Everyone discusses questions from the text,
3. ...and so on until you discuss each column...
Then,
Develop a group statement about the value of text coding.