Presented here is a practical tool called the Active Reading Document (ARD) that can give students the necessary incentive to engage with the text/readings. By designing the tool to incrementally develop student understanding of the material through reading using Marzano's Taxonomy as a framework, the ARD offers support through scaffolding as they build content knowledge (and reading comprehension skills) in an intentional and concrete way prior to engaging in the classroom. The scaffolded nature of the ARD is intended to make class time more productive as well as to promote deeper understanding and higher order thinking skills which are more likely to transfer to other settings or later courses.