BIG FOX

       Have you heard of BIG FOX?  It is a strategy to help students read nonfiction.  The BIG part is for before they read and the FOX part is for after they read.  I stumbled upon this recently (I can't remember exactly where, if it was your blog-thanks!) and then on Wednesday when I received my class's newest Scholastic News I saw that they were also highlighting this strategy.  So on to the strategy:

B-bold (list the bold words you see)
I-italics or other special fonts (list the words in italics or other special fonts you see)
G-graphics (tell what graphics, pictures, illustrations, maps, etc... you see)

F-facts (list two facts that you learned from the article)
O-opinions (write one opinion you have about what you read in the article)
X-x marks the spot (draw an x next to the main idea of the text.  Then summarize the main idea there.)

        Of course you can tweak this strategy to meet the needs of your students and/or the purpose of your instruction.  Depending on the length of the text I may increase the number of facts and/or opinions that I would ask the students to find.  I would love to use the articles from the Comprehension Toolkit so that the students could actually mark right on the article-especially the "x" I think that that would be cool.
        I have not quite figured out how to upload documents onto my blog, so I usually just put things onto my class website and then link that to the blog-but I won't be able to do this until tomorrow because I am off to go visit my parents and celebrate my dad's 60th birthday!!! But I will definitely add to this post with a visual tomorrow so that if you want to print and use with your kiddos you can.