What  is  the  post-it  strategy?
Why  does  it  work?

Videos 
The post-it note strategy asks students to mark the text they are reading.  This strategy encourages students to be active readers, rather than passive readers.  Students become engaged in the text, pay attention to their reading, and have simple notes to look back at.  Power Tools for Adolescent Literacy by Jan Rozzelle and Carol Scearce describes this strategy.  "[The strategy] helps the reader focus during reading and remember key information.  It can be used for discussion.  It also personalizes the text the reader is reading and allows teacher to know what the student is thinking" (2009).  

Kylene Beers, author of When Kids Can't Read describes more ways to use this strategy.  "Students used them to flag what they didn't understand or particularly liked.  They used them to jot down notes about characters or in history class about events or in science class about experiments.  As students finished chapters or stories, they took the sticky notes off the pages of their text and put them onto notebook paper that they kept in their notebooks" (2003).  

The post-it notes strategy is fun to use because students enjoy using them, and it increases student interest in almost any lesson. 
This video show strategies for using post-it notes to track thinking and ideas while reading.  
In the video below, The Call of The Wild is used to model the post-it note strategy.  Here, a post it is used to note that the theme of the novel is being developed.  
How can I use this Strategy?
Use this strategy in many ways!  Students can color-code post its for different purposes.  You can have students use a variety of sized and shaped post-its.  Have students write down questions, thoughts, or create a system of codes for students to make quick marks... maybe a question mark (?) could be shorthand for a place that a student found confusing, or an exclamation point (!) to mark a place that is surprising.  
Resources 
  • The Teaching Channel's website has a video with lesson ideas, and a comments board with tons of ideas for using post-it notes with students.  
  • This resource, by Lori Jamison provides her uses of post-its in the classroom, as well as tips and tricks to use them in the best way possible.
  • This Teachers Pay Teachers free resource has three posters to use while introducing the post-it strategy to your students. 
Incorporate Writing  
This reading strategy uses writing to take down the notes for the post-its.  Students also must make conclusions and draw evidence to support ideas.  This is connected to CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.9, which states, "Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research" (English Language Arts, n.d). 
Examples 
Resources 

Beers, K. (2003). When kids can't read, what teachers can do: A guide for teachers, 6-12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

English Language Arts Standards » Writing » Grade 6. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2015, from http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/W/6/