Analyzing Texts & Data

Where to start

It's often helpful to start with what most students find to be more fun: doodling. Laying out long strips of butcher paper within the first couple weeks of school, you can watch parts of this TED talk by Sunni Brown called Doodlers, unite! and read your first text as a class. Encourage the students to doodle with purpose while you read, watch, or discuss a text. In other words, encourage students to doodle only what connects and applies to what you are reading, watching, or discussing. This exercise helps give students a more positive view on taking notes, which merely primes them for when you dive deeper into more complex close reading protocols, graphic organizers, note taking techniques, etc.

Sketchnotes

The research behind visual note taking is astounding. The strength of sketch notes comes from creating more neuro pathways to the same destination or piece of information. In other words, by creating a picture and words to represent new information learned, students retain the information better because of the number of connections made in the brain. Think of the metacognitive process in choosing what to draw, which text to include, making comparisons, and creating analogies and metaphors for the new information.  

There are three main elements to consider with using sketch notes:
  • Text
  • Pictures
  • Structure

Annotation & Close Reading Protocols

There are various annotation methods and protocols available, which can have a great impact. Whichever you choose to use, try pasting the text to be annotated directly into the Thoughtbooks (if possible).

A few annotation methods include:
  • Read the text multiple times, but through a different lens each time (what is being said? What message is being conveyed?). 
  • ​Read, then pause to think, and record your thoughts. Repeat this process as often as desired.
  • Use post-its to record patterns, questions, ideas, etc.
  • Use different colored highlighters to represent various pieces of the text (patterns, connections, themes, etc.)

Self Questioning

Teaching students to ask their own questions as they engage with a text has a high effect size of 0.55. There are various methods, protocols, techniques, and labels: open-ended and close-ended; Question Answer Relationship (QAR); ​factual, convergent, divergent, evaluative, and combination; Question Formulation Technique (QFT); leading, funneling, rhetorical, etc. The list goes on and on. Even using bloom's Taxonomy, where students have to place the questions they create on what level of thinking would be required to answer the question. Whichever you choose, the important aspect is that students learn to ask questions that kindle their curiosity as they read.
 

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers can be extremely effective in helping students analyze and identify pieces of text. Unfortunately, all too often students are merely give a graphic organizer they must complete for credit. Graphic organizers are most effective when students are taught to create their own to organize their thoughts and plan out ideas. Also, when students are taught to choose which graphic organizer would best fit the task and purpose it dramatically increases their understanding.

Many well know graphic organizers as as follows:
  • Cause & Effect (with prior causes & after effects)
  • Bubble Webbs
  • Collaborative Note Taking (four square)
  • T-Charts
  • Cornell Notes
  • KWL
  • Venn Diagrams

Diagrams, Charts, & Graphs

Graphs and charts are most often used to depict an analysis of specific pieces of a text, or to pinpoint certain variables, so one may separate them and look at them individually (often in comparison to others).

Diagrams in particular are used primarily to illustrate all of the pieces of an object. Illustrating complex machinery, anatomy, or structures becomes an extremely useful skill as the knowledge base grows increasingly complex in higher level courses. So learning to dissect and depict your dissection is a particularly valuable ability. 

The ability to visualize all pieces of an object or variables in a problem also help with visual problem solving and helping others to see pieces that may go unnoticed.