Unlocking Reading Comprehension: The Power of Sticky Notes for Students

Reading comprehension is a fundamental skill that underpins academic success and lifelong learning. While educators often dedicate significant time and resources to crafting elaborate comprehension activities, simple and readily available tools, like sticky notes, can be exceptionally effective in helping students develop and enhance their comprehension skills. This article explores the multifaceted ways in which sticky notes can be strategically employed to foster critical thinking, improve vocabulary, and promote active engagement with texts, ultimately transforming students into more proficient and thoughtful readers.

The Versatile Nature of Sticky Notes in Education

Sticky notes are fan favorites for teachers and students and earn top honors for Best Multipurpose Teaching Tool. People enjoy the flexibility to jot, stick, move, and share on a square. It cultivates an industrious attitude. The inherent space limitation of sticky notes makes them ideal for tasks where we want the gist. Notice I didn’t say small tasks. Quite the contrary. Sticky notes empower us to contemplate, coordinate, and connect. Good things come in small packages. They jazz up our lessons in a jiff.

Enhancing Comprehension Skills

Sticky notes are also an excellent tool for the development of critical thinking skills. Asking students to record their inferences and predictions encourages them to pay close attention as they read, think critically about what they’re reading, and remember important details from the text more easily. As students practice recording their thoughts, they will begin to develop the skill of synthesis. Students will learn to take in new information and process it, allowing it to change or develop the thoughts and understandings they have about a story or text. Being able to synthesize information will greatly improve students’ as whole readers.

Making Predictions and Inferences

Predictions- “I think …..”. Sticky notes provide a tangible space for students to formulate and record their predictions about what might happen next in a story or text. By actively engaging in this predictive process, students become more invested in the reading experience, paying closer attention to details and clues that might support or refute their initial hypotheses. Similarly, sticky notes can be used to capture inferences, those "reading between the lines" moments where students draw conclusions based on implicit information in the text. Encouraging students to articulate their inferences on sticky notes promotes deeper understanding and critical analysis.

Describing Story Elements

Another way sticky notes can be useful for reading comprehension is for describing story elements. As stories progress, students can jot down important plot points like characters, settings, events, etc., on individual sticky notes. This can also be a way for you to check for comprehension. Are students understanding what they are reading? Do they know what the character is like? Do they know what the problem in the story is? You can create a simple anchor chart like the one above. Choose specific colors for each story element and students can practice this sticky note strategy any time they read!

For instance, a color-coded system can be implemented, where each color represents a specific story element:

Pink: CHARACTER: Describe the main character using two traits.
Blue: SETTING: Describe when & where the story takes place.
Orange: PROBLEM/CONFLICT: What is the conflict or problem in the story? How do the characters try to solve this?
Green: PLOT: Summarize the story.
Yellow: THEME: What is the theme/message of the story? Support with evidence.
Neon: INFERENCES: Draw inferences and make predictions.

Vocabulary Development and Contextual Analysis

Sticky notes can also serve as an effective resource when teaching context clues or unfamiliar words. Students can use sticky notes to record any new vocabulary words that come up during their readings and then use context clues within the text to determine their definitions. Not only can this strategy help students learn how to identify and use context clues, but it can also help teachers assess it.

Unlocking Meaning Through Context

You can select a few words from the text that may be unknown or difficult for students. Have them record each word on a separate sticky note. Then, as they read and get to the word, students will develop a definition or synonym based on the surrounding context clues. This encourages critical thinking as well as vocabulary development. By actively searching for clues within the text, students develop a deeper understanding of vocabulary and improve their ability to decipher unfamiliar words independently.

Formative Assessment and Exit Slips

Similarly, sticky notes are excellent exit slips. They are easy to collect and quick to assess. Students can record their answers to exit slip prompts that you provide, either displayed on the board or asked aloud. This is especially helpful when you’re looking for a specific answer that would indicate understanding. For example, at the end of a lesson on sensory details, you can ask students to list two examples of sensory details from the story on their sticky notes. Or, if you have read an informational text about migration, you can have students explain what migration is on their sticky notes. Any sort of question you would want to ask that would indicate students’ grasping of the concepts you were teaching can be collected on sticky notes!

Classroom Management and Organization

Keep an extra “sticky note tray” that is closer to the size of sticky notes than regular paper. OR You can keep a poster “Parking Lot” on the wall for students to stick their sticky notes to. Simply create a chart with squares for each of the students and they can always leave their sticky notes in that square.

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The "Parking Lot" Concept

Steer student ideas toward a sticky note, then park them in the lot. Also, a parking lot makes a great dumping ground for questions when the time isn’t quite right. This designated space allows students to record questions or ideas that arise during a lesson without disrupting the flow of instruction. The "parking lot" can then be revisited later, providing an opportunity for further discussion and clarification.

Fostering Collaboration and Idea Generation

When it comes to idea generation, I find students often experience one of two extremes: flooded with ideas or brainstorming drought. Some students gush with so many ideas, they need help condensing thoughts. They overstuff the wide mouth of the idea funnel. Conversely, others struggle with generating ideas. They stare endlessly at blank paper or a blinking cursor. A tiny sticky note is less intimidating and may offer the gentle nudge they need to begin.

Visualizing Ideas and Ranking Concepts

For example, groups may be brainstorming the causes of a particular problem and then they need to rank the causes in order of the most impact. Students can use the “Wisdom of Crowds” approach to rank ideas. Each student is given sticky notes in different colors, with each color being assigned a rank, such as yellow (1-highest rank) to pink (3-lowest rank). Once all ideas are written on the board or a large flip-chart, students rank the ideas by placing a corresponding sticky note by that idea. So, if yellow is the highest ranking sticky note, a student will place it next to the idea they rank the highest. The beauty of this activity is that no one knows who placed their sticky note where and it is obvious at a glance which are the top ranked ideas.

Team Concept Maps

Sticky notes are a flexible way to interact with team concept maps because the notes can be rearranged again and again to combine, separate, and synthesize ideas. There are many types of graphic organizers, each designed for a specific purpose. One example is the Fishbone diagram, which can help students slow down their thinking and analyze a problem. Fishbone diagrams are helpful when the goal is for students to learn that they can’t solve a problem until they have thoroughly analyzed what is causing the problem. Students are presented with a problem and directed to explore the causes before the solutions. To help them organize and visualize their ideas, they can draw the fishbone outline on a whiteboard, large piece of paper, or flip-chart. The problem or effect is displayed at the head or mouth of the fish. Use the fishbone diagram tool to keep the team focused on the causes of the problem, rather than the symptoms or solutions. Using sticky notes allows students the flexibility to group and rank causes.

Promoting Active Reading Strategies

During guided reading groups, we pulled out the small sticky notes. I told them to put a sticky note next to interesting facts. Other times, I’ve told them to put the sticky notes next to things that they learned on a page. I’ve also had them put sticky notes next to facts that they think are important for them to remember. Then we’ll go back and reread to together, sharing what they marked. They love using sticky notes! I give them a limit so they have to limit what they choose. I usually use the sticky notes on their own, but I’ve also created this worksheet to use on occasion.

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Thinkmarks

Thinkmarks are bookmark cards readers use when interacting with text. While reading, jot questions or thoughts, stick them to the book page, and continue on without missing a beat. During sharing time later, turn to the page, find the text evidence, and share the sticky note reflection. The Thinkmark cards house sticky jots students accumulate as they progress through the book. This strategy encourages active engagement with the text and promotes deeper reflection on the material.

Annotating Classroom Displays

Classroom displays keep learning front and center. Prevent them from blending into backgrounds by empowering students to annotate them with sticky notes. As students leave a small strategy group or conference, give them a souvenir to take back to their workspace. During the lesson, students jot the learning strategy on a sticky note. Later, when they work independently, they have it as a reference. This reinforces learning and provides students with a tangible reminder of key concepts.

Multisensory Learning and Engagement

I looked up, around, and finally down to the ground for places sticky notes could get students moving. Break multisyllabic words into parts. The syllabicated word shown in the photo is entertain. Students enjoy copy paper flipbooks, but construction is time-consuming. We crafted this miniature version on the fly with sticky notes. For each syllable type learned, students stuck an additional note onto their flipbooks. What a rewarding feeling to finish a project and share it with others in a gallery of good works! Sticky notes chunk large tasks into small, manageable clusters. They are the written equivalent of quick media sound bites. Each nugget is chock full of a meaningful message.

Practice ordering rules by rearranging words and punctuation to form a grammatically correct sentence. This multisensory activity promotes clearly communicated thoughts with proper subject-verb agreement.

The Cognitive Benefits of Handwriting

Sticky notes wield the power of being our personal stamp. They require old-fashioned pens, pencils, and markers. Researchers discovered notes typed on digital devices tend to be verbatim. On the other hand, recording notes by hand involves a slew of cognitive processes. Our brains summarize, paraphrase, organize, manipulate, and mold information when we play with what we want to say and how we want to say it. It involves a good productive struggle to arrive at just the right words.

Research Support for Sticky Note Strategies

In a 2015 study (Davis-Wiley & Wooten), professors at the University of Tennessee designed a note-taking strategy for their Literacy and ESL methods graduate students to interact with their assigned text readings using sticky notes to document their experiences. The goal of the activity was to encourage students to think metacognitively during their literacy meaning-making process. The researchers found the “sticky note/interacting-with-text approach” expanded the reader’s personal strategies for deriving meaning from text, suggesting that this method could be used as a teaching/reading/learning/reflecting and discussion-enhancing activity appropriate for all levels of post-secondary students.

This technique asks students to use sticky notes to annotate their readings in textbooks, literature, and other assigned books. The goal is for students to document how they connect the reading to their personal background knowledge, life experiences, and social and cultural stances. As they read, interpret, and analyze the text/novel and make connections to previous knowledge, students synthesize their ideas onto a sticky note and attach the note on or near the relevant passage. Students should not think of the notes as a way to simply summarize; rather, they should include questions, connections, thoughts, ideas and reactions. Students can refer to their sticky notes during pertinent discussions, which can lead to more in-depth interpretations.

Strategic Implementation in the Classroom

I try to be strategic when incorporating sticky notes in lessons. As a visible thinking tool, sticky notes have a range of uses, each with their own end goals. Once I decide how to incorporate sticky notes into an activity, I figure out where they should be curated. Should they be displayed in plain view for the whole class to reference? Do students need borders designating where to place the sticky notes? Let’s look at examples from my classroom to see some of the ways sticky notes can promote hands-on, minds-on thinking for our students.

Visible Thinking and Classroom Displays

Decorate your doorframe (above, right) with students’ learning. During a word study lesson, readers recorded patterns they noticed in texts. Ideas could be fleeting if we don’t record them. Out of sight, out of mind. Partners turn-and-talk during mini-lessons and jot ideas for anchor charts and graphic organizers. Have you seen that penny tray next to a cash register? Mimic that give-and-take with designated board space where students can borrow an idea or leave one for a classmate. The photo below shows an idea board for student writers. This also works great with story starter ideas and sentence stems. My colleague Megan Kelly had her students read argument writing exemplars before crafting their own.

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