Mark It Up Strategy
2 Min Read • Arts Integration
As a musician, I can’t tell you how many times I needed to “mark up” my music. I thought I knew what that meant – until I got to college. Where I used to just circle tricky passages or make a reminder here or there before, I now had to create fully colorized pages on my music. It was a night and day difference! What’s funny is that the markings themselves weren’t what helped me with the piece: it was the process of marking up my music that allowed me to dive deeper into it. By taking the time to examine the music for specific purposes, I could see and appreciate how all of the pieces worked together through a Mark It Up Strategy.
We can use this Mark It Up Strategy when working on any composition or problem! Here’s how it works:
1. You hand out a piece of writing, a math problem, or an artistic composition. It could be from another source, or it may be the child’s own work.
2. Ask students to use the poster below to review the work four times. Each time, they are examining the work for a different purpose. Be sure they have 4 different colors to use!
3. After students have marked up the work, gather together as a group and discuss what each of them noticed about the piece as they studied it. Were there any common threads?
Here’s the poster that students can reference in this classroom strategy:
DOWNLOAD THIS POSTER HERE
You can use this strategy in any classroom – E/LA, Math, Science, Social Studies, Fine Arts – and adjust it to meet your grade level needs. Let’s all dig a little deeper and see what we can discover!
