I begin by giving each student a copy of the text we are going to look at (usually given to me 2 mins prior by the classroom teacher). Then I ask them to look at the title and we predict what we think the text may be about and the students discuss any prior knowledge they have of the topic.
I did this yesterday with a worksheet on Gold with a year five class. It was titled 'Gold Fever', and it was very interesting to find out what the students thought 'Gold Fever' might mean as no one in the group had heard that term before.
After we predict and discuss possible information we think we might find in the text then I show them how I want them to code the text.
* for important information *
? for something I didn't know/new information
( ) around words I don't know the meaning of
_____ technical words
zig zag line for something interesting
Then I read the text to the students.
I read it slowly, line by line, so they have time to code.
I stop at the end of each paragraph and I ask what words they found that they thought were important words, what words had brackets (then I explain the meanings of each word), what words had a ? and what was an interesting fact they learned (zig zagged lines). Then we write the technical words they found in each paragraph on the board and add to the list as we continue paragraph by paragraph.
I then finish each paragraph by having the children tell me what they thought the paragraph was about and we discuss the meaning of the entire paragraph.
We continue in this fashion until each paragraph has been covered.
The students seem to enjoy this activity as it breaks the text down to paragraph level and it makes it less intimidating. It also gives them ample time to discuss how and what they coded and compare with others and it allows key vocabulary to be explored paragraph by paragraph - so as those words continue to feature through the text they no longer become unknown words.
There is a similar activity in Linda Hoyt's 'Revisit, Reflect, Retell'. I have adapted it to use my own codes and you can make up what ever codes you wish the students to use.