Reading Strategies

Reading Strategies Dawn Withee Multi-Program Instructional Coach Kent Meridian High School Dawn.Withee@kent.k12.wa.us X4021

Cognitive Strategies • Predict • Make connections • Visualize • Ask questions • Summarize • Make inferences • Use context clues • Monitor and adjust reading speed • Monitor and clarify for understanding

Before Reading Good Readers • Access their prior knowledge • Interact with portions of text • Practice sequencing, find cause & effect relationships, draw comparisons, make inferences, and predict • Identify vocabulary that might be a problem • Construct meaning before the begin reading the text Kylene Beers

During Reading Good Readers • Predict what will happen next • Question what they don’t understand or what is confusing in the text • Monitor their understanding of the text • Identify ways to fix up what has confused them in the text • Clarify what has confused them • Comment on the text or their understanding of the text • Connect what they are reading to other texts or personal experiences • Visualize the text Kylene Beers

After Reading Good Readers: • Question what they don’t understand or what is confusing in the text • Monitor their understanding of the text • Identify ways to fix up what has confused them in the text • Clarify what has confused them • Comment on the text or their understanding of the text • Connect what they are reading to other texts or personal experiences • Visualize the text • Compare or contrast one part of the text to another • Summarize what they have read • Identify main characters, major events, and details • Identify conflicts or main problems in the text • See causal connections in a text • Make inferences and draw conclusions • Distinguish between fact and opinion Kylene Beers

Making Connections • Activating Prior Knowledge • Building Prior Knowledge • Integrating curriculum/concepts • Types of connections • Text-to-self • Text-to-world • Text-to-text • Cause-Effect • Chronological • Comparison/Contrast • Use prior knowledge to make predictions and inferences

KWL

KWL Example—Heat

Text Impression • A Pre, during or after reading activity that arouses curiosity and allows students to anticipate what the reading might be about, to focus on the key words and concepts while reading, an to connect that information through writing after reading. • Can be used with both narrative and expository text. • Uses clue words as a basis for predicting content, focusing during reading, and connecting information after reading. • Procedure: • Teacher selects clue words from the reading—between five and seven. This causes the teacher to decide what is most important to learn. • Teacher sequences them with arrows to form a descriptive chain. • Before reading, students write a paragraph based on the chain of words. This gives students an opportunity to connect prior knowledge to new learning that will occur. • While reading, students should focus on the words (concepts while reading). This creates an awareness on the students’ parts of important concepts to be learned. • After reading, students write a paragraph (somewhat of a summary) using as many of the clue words as possible and any other important words found in the text. LOOK BACKS in the text should be encouraged while writing. Mary Spor

Text Impressions Example • Ingenious • Patriot • Invincible • Extortion • Loyalty • Peculiar • Scrutiny

The Ingenious Patriot • Ambrose BierceHaving obtained an audience of the King an Ingenious Patriot pulled a paper from his pocket, saying: "May it please your Majesty, I have here a formula for constructing armour-plating which no gun can pierce. If these plates are adopted in the Royal Navy our warships will be invulnerable, and therefore invincible. Here, also, are reports of your Majesty's Ministers, attesting the value of the invention. I will part with my right in it for a million tumtums." After examining the papers, the King put them away and promised him an order on the Lord High Treasurer of the Extortion Department for a million tumtums. "And here," said the Ingenious Patriot, pulling another paper from another pocket, "are the working plans of a gun that I have invented, which will pierce that armour. Your Majesty's Royal Brother, the Emperor of Bang, is anxious to purchase it, but loyalty to your Majesty's throne and person constrains me to offer it first to your Majesty. The price is one million tumtums." Having received the promise of another check, he thrust his hand into still another pocket, remarking: "The price of the irresistible gun would have been much greater, your Majesty, but for the fact that its missiles can be so effectively averted by my peculiar method of treating the armour plates with a new -" The King signed to the Great Head Factotum to approach. "Search this man," he said, "and report how many pockets he has." "Forty-three, Sire," said the Great Head Factotum, completing the scrutiny. "May it please your Majesty," cried the Ingenious Patriot, in terror, "one of them contains tobacco." "Hold him up by the ankles and shake him," said the King; "then give him a check for forty-two million tumtums and put him to death. Let a decree issue declaring ingenuity a capital offence." http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/IngPat.shtml

Preview and Predict Preview and Predict is a comprehension strategy that causes the reader to activate prior knowledge by using clues about the content. Procedures: • Preview the text in a short period of time (3-5 minutes) by viewing and discussing various aspects of the text such as: • Narrative Text: • Title • Title Page • Front and back cover • Author & Illustrator information • Pictures • Chapter Titles (and layout) • Opening Paragraph • Prologue, forward, afterward, epilogue • Any other unusual features • Expository Text • Table of contents • Index • Chapter titles • Headings & subheadings • Captions • Charts, graphs, tables • Typographic features • Glossary, appendices, index • Any other unusual features • Encourage students to predict what the text may be about. When working with the whole class, the teacher can write the students’ predictions on an overhead transparency or on the chalk/white board. • Students should be able to justify how aspects of the preview supported their predictions. • Students then read a portion of the text, stopping at critical points to discuss whether their predictions were or were not confirmed by the text or story. If predictions were supported by the text, students make new predictions and read on. If predictions were not supported by the text, the predictions should be modified or changed to reflect the text. • When using chapter books or expository texts, the preview may also include summarizing previous chapters. The first paragraph may be read for additional clues about what will happen next. Mary Spor

Anticipation Guide • Teacher writes a few (2-10) generalizations that relate to the main ideas or themes of the text. Choose statements that are controversial, or that might be commonly held, but will be challenged by the text. • Before reading, students mark agree or disagree for each statement. • As a class discuss the statements and students’ responses. • Read Text. Students may want to take notes on the anticipation guide when they get to parts of the text relevant to each statement. • After reading, students mark agree or disagree on the guides a second time. • In a class discussion, and/or in writing, students explore how their opinion changed based on what they read. • You might also have students revisit the guide answer as a particular character, historical figure, etc. Kylene Beers and Mary Spor

Anticipation Guide - Example

Have You Ever… • Similar to an anticipation guide • Generate a list of experiences that are relevant to the text • Have students mark a check by anything they have done • Possible activities for processing the list • As a class go through the list and make tally marks to see collective class experience • Have students share anecdotes about their experiences • Have students pick 1 to 3 experiences to write about • After reading • Have students write, comparing their experience to the text • Have students pretend they are a character from the text and check the expereicnes accordingly. Then have them reflect on how the character’s experiences compare to their own.

Have You Ever… - example Life of Penguins Have you ever… __ Been in a life and death situation? __ Had to hunt for food? __ Gone swimming in freezing water? __ Eaten raw fish?

Probable Passage • A brief summary of the text, with key words omitted. • Keys words presented separately in a list • Defined • Classified as to their function within the text • Students write the words in the blanks, predicting how they will fit into the text • Students read text • Students look back at the probable passage to see how their prediction matched up with the text • Teachers should emphasize making valid predictions, and de-emphasize being “right.” Kylene Beers

Probable Passage - Example Passage: _____ are giant formations of frozen _____. The form at the earth’s _____. They are different from _____ because they float on top of the _____, and are not connected to earth’s _____. They can be as big as _____. Vocabulary Australia Crust Icebergs Islands Ocean Poles Water

Tea Party • Teacher writes sentences, phrases, and/or words (directly quoted from text) on note cards. • 1 note card per student • Repeat phrases 2-3 times (1/2 as many phrases as students is a good rule of thumb) • Students move around the house sharing and discussing their phrases (they should activate prior knowledge and make predictions) • Students form small groups and discuss what they think the text will be about • Groups write a paragraph beginning with “We think this selection is about…” • As a class, groups share and explain their ”we think” statements. • Read the selection Kylene Beers

Say Something • Students take turns reading in groups of 2-3 • Students occasionally pause reading to say something • Make a prediction • Ask a questions • Make a connection • Comment on what is happening in the text • Clarify a confusion • Group members comment on what student said • Another student continues reading Kylene Beers

Think Aloud A Think Aloud* is a comprehension monitoring strategy that helps the teacher and the reader to recognize the text-based and schema-based strategies he/she uses while reading text aloud. This can serve as an intervention tool or an expansion of reading power activity. For a Think Aloud to be successful, the teacher and the students must be cognizant of effective reading strategies, the role of schema in comprehension, and the structure and content of the text being read. Text-based strategies include connections with previous reading, pointing out main ideas, translating information into one’s own words, pointing out lack of understanding, using strategies to make sense out of text not understood, recognizing the internal structure of text (sequence, cause/effect, comparison/contrast, description, problem/solution). Schema (according to cognitive Psychology) is an organized network of concepts, experiences, and data. Schema-based strategies include making connections to prior knowledge (life experience, previous reading and learning, prediction, elaboration, inference). Procedures: • Choose both easy and difficult text to read aloud. • Model how to use a Think Aloud. • Provide students with an easy and difficult text. • Ask students to read aloud and note in the margins (or if working individually with a teacher or partner, tell orally) what they are thinking as they read the text. • Compare and contrast the strategies used with easy and difficult text. Are they schema-based, text-based, or a combination of both? • What additional strategies could this student use to build comprehension of this particular text. Mary Spor

It says, I say and So Kylene Beers

Graphic Organizers • Make Graphic Organizers Using: • Inspiration • PowerPoint • Word • Publisher • Web Sites such as ReadingQuest

Sociograms • Have students create a visual charting relationships between people (or countries, animals, concepts, etc.) • Use shape/color to represent different people • Use lines and distance to represent the relationships between people

Double Bubble Map

Venn Diagram

Chronological Map

T Chart

Cycle of Events

H Chart

Cause-Effect

Cause-Event-Effect

Reading Strategies