Volume notes at the break and the return
What we ask students to write beside the volume histogram when a level gives way and when price revisits it.
Volume is not a scoreboard. In our room it is a margin note: did participation expand when price left the range, and did it shrink or surge when price came back?
We look for expansion on the break relative to the quiet sessions that built the range. A muted break can still work, but it earns a lower confidence mark on the checklist and a smaller size if traded at all.
On the retest, shrinking volume often accompanies orderly tags of the level. A volume spike back into the range is a warning that the break may be failing. None of this replaces structure — it colours the decision.
Students practise by annotating six historical examples before we touch live charts. The goal is a habit of writing one volume sentence per candidate, not a search for a magic threshold.