Very Important Points

Description: The VIP strategy is used to support readers in their efforts to navigate through the text, comprehend challenging material, reflect on key points or ideas, make connections, and clarify understanding.

Targeted Skills: Develop comprehension, organize and synthesize ideas, identify main ideas and supporting details, summarize information, paraphrase ideas and analyze text structure.

When to use the strategy: During reading

Example:

1. Provide each student with a sticky notes cut into stripes.

2. As students read have them mark the text to indicate very important points. These important points can consist of points of interest, confusion, or a place where the student remembered a connection.

3. At the end of the reading have the students meet in pairs of a small group and discuss the VIP's they selected.

4. For a higher-level activity you can have them come to a consensus about the VIP's for a particular section.

Differentiate or modify: Student summarizes VIP individually or in small groups. Teacher creates a graphic organizer for students to record VIPs on.

Annotate the text. Annotating can range from simple to quite sophisticated.

Create a coding system for identifying VIPs.