Ignition covers skills that are essential to comprehending middle and high school level texts. They fall into two categories.
Zinc-ing means turning words and phrases into images, experiences and meanings in our minds. Strong readers do this naturally, but everyone benefits from deepening these habits and appreciating the writers’ craft.
Use Your Senses: The easiest way into any text: start with the words and phrases you can see, smell, touch, taste or hear in you head. "Swimming in a pond in the rain"
Make It Real: More challenging abstract words only make sense when we think of relevant examples. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
Tracking: Once you’re making images, experiences and meanings in your head, you need to track them in sequence to stay on the writer’s wavelength.
Activate Pronouns: When students miss a "this" or an "it," they get lost and bored. Connecting pronouns to their antecedents keeps them following the text.
Navigate with Transitions and Punctuation: Transition words and punctuation marks guide us through the layers of meaning in any text.