Fourth-grade students silently read an assigned text as part…

Fourth-grade students silently read an assigned text as part of the English language arts block and then meet with the teacher for small group discussion. During the silent reading portion, the teacher instructs students to use stick-on notes so they can bookmark passages while they make predictions, ask or answer questions, or encounter an unfamiliar word. In addition to anchoring the group discussions in the text, this practice benefits students primarily by increasing their: