Creating a "Reading Salad"

I introduced the word metacognition to the students this past week.  I taught them that metacognition is thinking about our thinking.  Meaning, while we are reading we aren't just reading the words like a robot.  We are actually "thinking" about the words in the context of our text and reflecting on our thoughts.  

In order for the students to understand, I had them create a reading salad (with tomatoes and lettuce) using text and thinking cards.  The red text cards represented the tomatoes and the green thinking cards represented our thinking while reading the text. 

 As we read from some text in a chapter book, we would stop periodically and think about our thinking and reading of the text.

                                 We started to notice something very quickly in our salad bowl!

  Just like a salad has more lettuce than tomatoes, we had MANY more thinking cards in our bowl than text cards.  Good readers are always thinking about what they read and not just reading the words.  Our goal is to make sure as readers we are comprehending what we read and constantly using our metacognition. I am hoping this little exercise allowed the students to grasp this concept. :)