READING STRATEGIES

for ALL Content Areas

  
TABLE of CONTENTS
Reading is ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 2
Research Helps Shift the Concept of Reading ………………………………........ 2
Changing the Face of Reading Comprehension Instruction ………………… 3
Prior Knowledge ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 3
Vygotsky’s Learning Theory ………………………………………………………………………. 4
Strategic Teachers …………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
Metacomprehension ……………………………………………………………………………………. 5
Teacher Decision-Making ………………………………………………………………………….. 5
Eight Questions to ask about Instructional Activities ………………………. 6
Teacher as Mediator ………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
Textbooks ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 7
Contrasting Good and Poor Readers ………………………………………………………… 8
Cooperative Learning ………………………………………………………………………………….. 10
Reciprocal Teaching ……………………………………………………………………………………. 11
Effective Explicit Instruction …………………………………………………………………. 12
Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA)………………………………………….. 13
Guidelines for Asking Questions ……………………………………………………………… 14
Question/Answer/Relationship (QAR) …………………………………………………… 15
Instructional Activities That Lead Students to a Gradual Shift in
the Responsibility for Self-Directed Learning …………………………………….. 16
Frayer Model ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 17
Modeling Reading: Think Alouds ………………………………………………………………. 18
Teaching Inference ……………………………………………………………………………………. 19
Ten Major Inference Types ……………………………………………………………………… 20
Summarizing …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 20
The Strategic Reader ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, 22
The Twelve Systems of Strategic Actions used by Readers ……………. 23
Strategies Good Readers Use …………………………………………………………………... 23
Fix-Up Strategies ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 24
Informed Strategies for Learning (ISL) ………………………………………………. 25
Graphic Organizers …………………………………………………………………………………….. 26
Semantic or Chapter Mapping ………………………………………………………………….. 27

1
Reading is …
Analytic

Interactive

Constructive

Strategic

There has been a conceptual shift in the way many researchers and teachers
think about reading, which gives students a much more active role in the learning
and reading comprehension process.” This shift is reflected in changes from
packaged reading programs to experience with books and from concentration on
isolated skills to practical reading and writing activities.

Yet, improvement in higher-level reading skills cannot come about simply by

an emphasis on reading instruction in isolation from the other work students do in
school. To foster higher-level literacy skills is to place a new and special emphasis
on thoughtful, critical elaboration of ideas and understanding drawn from the
material students read and from what they already know. (NAEP)

Research Helps Shift the Concept of Reading

Comprehension is:

 An active, constructive process.

 A thinking process before, during, and after reading.
 An interaction of the reader, the text, and the context. (Palincsar, Olge,
Jones, Carr, & Ransom)

Comprehension is the dynamic process of constructing meaning by combining

the reader’s existing knowledge with the text information within the context of
the reading situation. (Cook)

2
Changing the Face of Reading Comprehension Instruction
 Accept comprehension for what it is. (Recognize the shift in the
concept of reading)
 Change the way we ask questions.
 Change the attitude and practices of teaching vocabulary.
 Change the way we teach comprehension.
 Develop curriculum that treats comprehension and composition as
similar processes.
 Change the teacher’s role in the classroom. *Pearson)

The most logical place for instruction in most reading and thinking strategies
is in social studies and science rather than in separate lessons about reading. The
reason is that the strategies are useful mainly when the student is grappling with
important but unfamiliar content. (Becoming a Nation of Readers)

Prior Knowledge
One of the most universal findings to emerge from recent research is the
marked degree in which a learner’s prior knowledge of a topic facilitates future
comprehension. This prior knowledge or pathway to understanding new ideas, when
related to content area assignments, is crucial. Content teachers must take steps
to determine students’ prior knowledge and background experience of a topic
before deciding the students can cope with a specific unit of study. (Readence,
Bean, & Baldwin)

Strategies

Approaches that emphasize students’ awareness of their own strategies and

alternative strategies as well as techniques for self-monitoring result in sizable
gains in comprehension performance. (Palincsar & Brown; Paris, Lipton, & Wixson)

3
Vygotsky’s Learning Theory
Learning is response. When a person hears or reads something he’s never
heard before, it doesn’t imprint upon his brain the way print remains on paper.
People are not blank, absorbent tablets. Instead, a person responds by hunting
through his mind for knowledge and understanding he already has to see how he
can make the old meaning connect to the new.

At this point he will need a mediator who can answer questions like these:
“You mean it’s like …?” and, “Well, if it’s like that, does it mean that it works the
same way?” Of course, as no two people have identical temperaments, perceptions
and life experiences, the way one sees, hears, touches, smells, and tastes his world
will lead him to a unique point of view and interpretation of the world.

If the above is true, then what one reads gets taken into all levels of the
mind and is almost instantly processed according to what the reader believes and
knows. The text becomes the readers’, and what one person reads will not have the
same meaning for another person. If you begin to think this way, it becomes
difficult to assess rightness and wrongness to individual interpretations.

Learning is recursive. When one connects a new idea to something familiar in

order to make meaning, he may have to go back and verify it, or else connect the
idea to something different and rethink. The processes recur. One may have to
distance himself from the concept for a while in order to internalize the idea, to
make it one’s own. (Vygotsky, 1962)

Strategic Teachers emphasize:

 Assistance during reading rather than procedure or assessment.
 Knowing how you know.
 Conscious connections to previous and future learning.
 The content to which new skills will be applied.
 Making invisible cognitive skills tangible.
 Responding to student confusion with advice about how to think
strategically. (Paris)

4
Metacomprehension
Metacomprehension instruction stems from Brown’s descriptors of
metacognition – 1) awareness of one’s own activities when reading, solving problems,
and studying, and 2) use of self-regulatory mechanisms by active learners.

Metacomprehension is in place when students understand or do not

understand what they are reading and know what to do about it (self-monitoring).
When students become conscious of their thinking and comprehension they can
deliberately try different “fix up” strategies when comprehension breaks down and
are more likely to become independent learners.

Instruction in the classroom should make clear how a text is read (strategy),
why it is important to employ the strategy, and when the strategy would be used.
Strategic teachers employ the following activities:

 Prereading
 Guided Reading
 Post Reading
 Coaching and feedback

Teacher Decision-Making
Components Teacher

Plan Knows what reading comprehension is

Analyzes text and task

Decides what students need to know

-Process (how-to-read-this-kind-of-text-knowledge

-Content (world knowledge)

Implement Accesses prior knowledge

Teaches how to read specific text structures

Directs explanation models

5
Monitor Constructs activities that make vivid the text/reading
interaction

Provides feedback

Evaluate Checks and interprets behavior

-Move on!

-Reteach?

-More practice?

-Forget it!

Eight Questions to ask about Instructional Activities

1. Is it focused on meaning getting?
2. Does it encourage readers to view the process of reading as meaning
getting?
3. Is it designed to produce fluent, efficient readers?
4. Does it employ “real” reading purposes and materials, i.e., provide for
practice in actual reading setting?
5. Does it challenge readers to become actively engaged in reading, to take
responsibility for their reading?
6. Are readers challenged to monitor their reading, to attend to its
sensibleness?
7. Does it avoid fragmentary introduction of isolated skills?
8. Is the utility of skills or strategy clearly apparent (Lipson)

6
Teacher as Mediator
Current research on effective teaching redefines the role of the teacher
during instruction. Based on Vygotsky’s theory, teachers are described as
“mediator,” or helpers, who take a much more active and interactive role in
instruction

According to Ann Brown “mediated learning” refers to a learning experience

where a supportive other person (parent, teacher, peer) is interposed between the
learner and the environment and intentionally influences the nature of the
interaction.

In the new view of instruction, teachers provide

 More in-depth explanation

 Guidance
 Modeling, demonstrating
 Support or “scaffolding”
 Guided practice
 Coaching, encouragement
 Interactions with students

What this means to students’ learning strategies is that what they initially
can accomplish only with assistance they are eventually able to do by themselves
(Gavelek). Through this support or “scaffolding” system, the teacher gradually
releases the responsibility of learning to the students, enabling them to become
independent learners.

Textbooks
Text Considerateness

How easy or difficult a text is to understand is affected by:

 Organization and structure of the text

 Whether the text addresses one concept at a time or tries to explain
several at once
 The clarity and coherence of what is explained

7
  Whether the text is appropriate for the students and the purpose
 Whether the information is accurate and consistent

Text Factors That Inhibit Comprehension

 Referents that are ambiguous, distant, or indirect

 Concepts for which the reader lacks requisite background
 Events or ideas that are not relevant to the text

Readability

The ease with which a person can read printed materials, called readability, is
related to many factors. These factors are not measured by conventional
readability formulas that are based on length of sentences and the number of long
or multisyllable words.

Readability includes:

 Reader’s prior knowledge

 Reader’s purpose
 Reader’s understanding of the vocabulary
 Reader’s interests and attitudes

Difficulty of material is related to:

 Author’s style of writing

 Author’s purpose
 Organization of content
 Physical layout of textual material (Michigan Curriculum Review
Committee & Michigan Reading Association and Armbruster &
Anderson)

Contrasting Good and Poor Readers

Good Readers

Before Reading

 Build up their background knowledge on the subject.

 Know their purpose for reading.

8
  Focus their complete attention on reading.

During Reading

 Give their complete attention to the reading task.

 Keep a constant check on their own understanding
 Monitor their reading comprehension and do it so often that it become
automatic.
 Stop only to us a fix-up strategy when they do not understand.

After Reading

 Decide if they have achieved their goal for reading.

 Evaluate comprehension of what was read.
 Summarize the major ideas in a graphic organizer.
 Seek additional information from outside sources.

Poor Readers

Before Reading

 Start reading without thinking about the subject.

 Do not know why they are reading.

During Reading

 Do not know whether they understand or do not understand.

 Do not monitor their own comprehension.
 Seldom use any of the fix-up strategies.

After Reading

 Do not know what they have read.

 Do not follow reading with comprehension self-check.

A dramatic improvement for poor readers results when they are taught to apply
intervention strategies to content text. (Orange County Public Schools)

9
Cooperative Learning
Group work can increase students’ achievement and encourage positive
feelings about learning and success. It improves student motivation,
participation/involvement, and critical thinking skills (Alvermann, Moore, & Conley).
Cooperative learning groups mix students of low, average, and high achievement
levels in groups of 4 or 5 to work on a common academic task. Through positive
social interaction, shared responsibility for each other’s learning, peer tutoring,
and coaching, students become active learners.

Teacher Responsibilities

 Form groups with low, average, and high achievers in each group.
 Give clear directions about the assignment or task.
 Set and call attention to time limits.
 Teach group skills; establish guidelines.
 Interact with groups to explain, clarify, motivate, or keep on task.
 Foster a pleasant and friendly work atmosphere. (Johnson, Johnson,
Holubec, & Roy)

Student Responsibilities

 Move to groups quietly and quickly.

 Stay in group. No wandering about.
 Use quiet voices.
 Encourage everyone to participate.
 Other social skills:
o Use names
o Look at the speaker
o No “put-downs”
o Keep one’s hands (and feet) to one’s self

10
Reciprocal Teaching
This strategy is conducted in cooperative groups where students work together
with informational texts in order to learn the material better. There are five
strategies used in this method.

1. Reading. The assigned text is first broken down into short sections for
the students to read. Typically, the leader of the group reads the section
aloud to the group.

2. Questioning. The leader and/or other group members now generate

questions derived from the text just read for the other group members to
answer.

3. Clarifying Issues. If any misunderstandings develop, the leader and/or

other group members help in clarification.

4. Summarizing. When all questions have been answered and any

misunderstandings have been clarified and discussed, the leader and/or
other group members summarize what they have just read.

5. Predicting. The students now make predictions about what the next
section may contain.

6. Continue using steps 1–5 until assigned text or chapter has been
completed. (Palinscar & Brown)

Initially the teacher models each of the segments, gradually turning over the
reins to the students while providing feedback and encouragement. The teacher
dialogue is the key to the successful implementation of the Reciprocal Teaching
Strategy. (Palincsar)

Effective Explicit Instruction

11
 1. Demonstration
Demonstrating is the process of teaching through examples, experiments or
modeling. Demonstrations help to raise student interest and reinforce
memory retention because they provide connections between facts and real-
world applications of those facts.

2. Guided Practice
Guided practice is showing and releasing the students to do the task or
standard at hand. An important part of this step is “checking for
understanding”. 

3. Collaboration
Collaboration allows students to actively participate in the learning process
by talking with each other and listening to other points of view. Collaboration
establishes a personal connection between students and the topic of study
and it helps students think in a less personally biased way. Group projects
and discussions are examples of this teaching method. Teachers may employ
collaboration to assess student's abilities to work as a team, leadership
skills, or presentation abilities.

Collaborative discussions can take a variety of forms, such as fishbowl

discussions or group projects. After some preparation and with clearly
defined roles, a discussion may constitute most of a lesson, with the teacher
only giving short feedback at the end or in the following lesson.

4. Independent Practice
Independent Practice is the part of the lesson cycle where students are
given the opportunity to practice the concept presented during the lesson
and is a time for students to work towards mastery of the knowledge/skills
presented in the lesson before an assessment is given. It is usually an
activity that the students accomplish individually, with a partner, or in small
groups while the teacher monitors the work. Activities during this part of
the lesson cycle can take many forms but are always aligned with the
learning goal and continue to push students towards mastery of the content.

Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA)

12
http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/drta

Moore, Readence, & Rickelman advocate the Directed Reading Thinking

Activity (DRTA) for promoting active comprehension for students. When students
read for established purposes, knowing how and why they are doing so, it is easier
to revise predictions. Critical reading expertise develops as students continually
refine their purposes and speculate about the nature and complexity of answers
they find using both their prior experiences and their background knowledge.

Stauffer reports the DRTA is effective for science and social studies
lessons as it is for reading narratives. The teacher sets the climate for DRTA and
directs the process by breaking the material into appropriate parts, but it is the
students who take the dominant role.

Richek, in describing possible variations of the DRTA to facilitate

independence in reading, suggests DRTA SOURCE. DRTA SOURCE helps students
reflect on the role the reader plays in the reading process. When making a DRTA
prediction, the reader uses two sources: the text and personal background
knowledge. In DRTA SOURCE, the teachers ask students to stop after making a
prediction and identify which part of the prediction was engendered by the text
and which by background knowledge. This helps students become more aware of
their own contributions to reading a lesson.

DRTA is easy. First, students predict using prior experiences and

background knowledge. Then, students are asked four questions to help focus on
meaning and creates a search to prove or disprove the prediction.

 What Do You Know You Know?

 What Do You Think You Know?
 What Do You Think You’ll Learn?
 What Do You Know You Learned? (Adapted from Palincsar et al.)

Next, students read and confirm or reject predictions, then refine the
hypotheses as new information is gathered. In essence, Moore, Readence, &
Rickelman set forth a process where the reader:

 Poses questions
 Tests these questions on reading the text
 Generates new questions as reading progresses

13
Guidelines for Asking Questions
Questioning can effectively guide and extend comprehension Teachers can
provide practice in critical thinking by asking carefully prepared questions on high
levels. At the same time they should avoid too many low level, single answer
questions. Providing questions before reading helps students focus on major ideas
and concepts.

Before reading, have students generate questions about a topic or concept.

Then after reading ask questions such as “Did you find the answers to the
questions?” “Which questions are still unanswered?” “What else did you learn that
we didn’t have questions for?” “What did the author do to make readers feel or
think a certain way?” “How did the author use language to convey a particular
idea?” “What evidence did the writer give?”

By asking lots of speculative and predictive questions, teachers demonstrate

model patterns so that they can encourage students to ask their own questions.
Students who ask themselves questions engage in self-monitoring which leads them
to becoming independent learners and comprehenders. (Hammond)

*** Try waiting 3-5 seconds after asking a question, allowing students to process
the question and formulate a response. (Conley)

Question/Answer/Relationship (QAR)

14
http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/question_answer_relationship

Explain to students that there are four types of questions they will
encounter. Define each type of question and give an example.

Procedure

1. The first question answering strategy, RIGHT THERE, is to find the

words used to create the question and look at the other words in that
sentence to find the answer. The answer is within a single sentence.
2. The question QAR, THINK AND SEARCH, also involves a question that
has an answer in the story, but this answer requires information from
more than one sentence or paragraph.
3. The third question/answer/relationship, ON MY OWN, represents a
question for which the answer must be found in the reader’s own
background knowledge.
4. The fourth QAR, AUTHOR AND YOU, represents a slightly different
interpretive question. The answer might be found in the reader’s own
background knowledge, but would not make sense unless the reader had
read the text
5. Four principles of instruction when teaching QARs:
a. Give immediate feedback
b. Progress from shorter to longer texts
c. Build independence by guiding students from group to independent
activities
d. Provide transition from the easier task to the more difficult
6. Students should be taught the four strategies and how to tell the
difference. Research shows that understanding the
question/answer/relationships increase student achievement. (Raphael)

15
 (Raphael)

Instructional Activities That Lead Students to a Gradual Shift in

the Responsibility for Self-Directed Learning
 Informing

 Modeling

 Guiding

 Observing

 Correcting

 Encouraging (Adapted from Vygotsky)

16
Frayer Model
The Frayer Model is a vocabulary development tool. The model helps to
develop a better understanding of complex concepts by having students identify
not just what something is, but what something is not. The center of the diagram
shows the concept being defined, while the quadrants around the concept are used
for providing the details.

Frayer considers it essential to present concepts in a relational manner

because it helps identify concepts by components in the learning process.

For example:

 Relevant and irrelevant attributes or characteristics

 Examples and non-examples

(Frayer, Frederick, & Klausmeier)

17
Modeling Reading: Think Alouds
To move the cloak of mystery surrounding the comprehension process teachers can
verbalize their own thoughts while reading orally. This detailed process of making
thinking public is called “think alouds.”

1. Select a passage to read aloud that contains points of difficulty,

contradictions, ambiguities, or unknown words. As the teacher reads the
passage aloud, students follow silently, listening to how to think through
each trouble spot.
2. Choose specific instances when comprehension breaks down and model for
the students a way to cope with each.
3. Remember the following points during “think alouds.”
a. Make predictions (developing hypotheses) – “From the title, I predict
that this section will tell how fishermen used to catch whales.” “In the
next part, I think we’ll find out why the man flew into the hurricane.”
“I think this is a description of a computer game.”
b. Describe the picture you’re forming in your head from the information
(developing images) – “I have a picture of this scene in my mind. The
car is on a dark, probably narrow, road: there are no other cars
around.”
c. Make analogies (linking prior knowledge to new information in the
text) – “This is like a time we drove to Austin and had a flat tire. We
were worried and we had to walk three miles for help.”
d. Verbalize confusing points (monitoring ongoing comprehension) – “This
just doesn’t make sense.” “This is different from what I had
expected.”
e. Demonstrate “fix-up” strategies (correcting lagging comprehension) –
“I’d better read.” “Maybe I’ll read ahead to see if it gets clearer.” “I’d
better change my picture of the story.” “This is a new word to me –
I’d better check context to figure it out.”

After several modeling experiences, students can work with partners to practice
“think alouds,” taking turns reading orally and sharing thoughts. Carefully
developed materials should be used initially (short with obvious problems). Finally,
encourage readers to practice “think aloud” strategies as they complete silent
reading assignments independently. (Davey)

18
Teaching Inference
Students need to be taught HOW to make inferences. They need to realize
that inferences are everywhere and that during the reading process an inference
can be (and often must be) modified.

Five Direct Instruction Steps

1. TEACH. The teacher reads a passage and specifies the type of inference to
be made. The teacher models/demonstrates, talks, exemplifies after reading
the passage. The teacher identifies and list Word Clues in a “think aloud”
discussion explaining just what the Word Clues clarify to help make the
inference accurate.
2. PRACTICE. Students read a passage, individually or in groups. As they read
they are to scrutinize/analyze the text to identify Word Clues that provide
evidence to justify the inference category specified. List the students’
Word Clues on the board. Encourage full and rich discussions as they talk
about why each Word Clue made a contribution to the inference.
3. APPLY. Identify the types of inference being applied. The students see
(read) a passage, one line at a time, and jot down their inferences. After
each line is exposed students reject/revise their inferences. At the
conclusion students identify and list the Word Clues that allowed them to
make the inferences. List the Word Clues is important until students take
ownership for this step in the task of inferencing.
4. EXTEND. Move into students’ textbooks. Practice expository passages. Ask
questions such as: “What kind of inference category is needed?” What are
the key words or Word Clues that lead to it?” “What is the inference we can
make?” Extension takes students to the real world of their own textbooks.
5. ASSESS. Find out if students can do the inference procedure. “If Word
Clues + Experiences = Inference, what do you do if students don’t have the
prior knowledge or experiences?” The Mapping procedure helps call prior
knowledge to the surface, builds bridges necessary to make inferences.
(Johnson & Johnson)

19
Ten Major Inference Types
1. LOCATION: “While we roared down the tracks, we could feel the bounce
and sway.”
2. AGENT (Occupation or Pastime): “With clippers in one hand and scissors in
the other, Chris was ready to begin the task.”
3. TIME: “When the porch light burned out, the darkness was total.”
4. ACTION: “Megan dribbled down the court and then passed the ball to
Cheryl.”
5. INSTRUMENT (Tool or Device): “With a steady hand, she put the buzzing
device on the tooth.”
6. CAUSE-EFFECT: “In the morning, we noticed that the trees were uprooted
and homes were missing their rooftops.”
7. OBJECT: “The broad wings swept back in a “v,” and each held two powerful
engines.”
8. CATEGORY: “The Toyota and Nissan were in the garage, and the Mercedes
was out front.”
9. PROBLEM-SOLUTION: “The side of his face was swollen, and his tooth
ached.”
10. FEELING-ATTITUDE: “While I marched past in the junior high band, my
Dad cheered and his eyes filled with tears.” (Johnson & Johnson)

Summarizing
Taylor points out that summarizing is an effective postreading technique that
research shows fosters increased understanding and remembering. She explains
and describes hierarchical summarizing, cooperative summarizing and mapping.

Some other ways to help students learn summarizing include teaching them to
recognize good summaries and providing practice in writing summaries and in rating
their own or others’ summaries.

Stanfill and Santa help students with summarizing by having them state the thing
being summarized, telling what it begins with, what’s in the middle, and what it
ends with. They call this procedure the “One-Sentence Summary.”

20
Marshall describes another technique to help students develop summaries by
teaching these steps:

1. Create a map.

2. Turn the map into a formal outline.

3. Use the major headings of the outline to write a summary.

Students’ understanding of summarization increases when teachers 1) provide

direct instruction applying the rules of writing summaries, 2) model using the rules,
3) give guided practice in group summary work, and 4) then allow students to write
individually.

Brown, Compione, and Day have developed rules for condensing major ideas in a
text. Using the rules, students check their own learning during reading and their
preparedness for later tests.

From basic to complex, the rules are

1. Delete trivial information

2. Delete redundant information

3. Think up general terms to replace lists of smaller items/actions

4. Summarize paragraphs, select topic sentences, or if there are none,

invent them

Middle grade students should learn the first two rules; high school and college
students can be taught to use them all, the invention rule being the most difficult.
(Stewart & Tei)

21
The Strategic Reader
 Understands how different reading goals and various kinds of texts require
particular strategies (analyzes)
 Identifies tasks and sets purpose (discriminates between reading to study
for a test and reading for pleasure)
 Chooses appropriate strategies for the reading situation (plans)
o Check for understanding
o Back up and reread
o Use prior knowledge to connect with text
o Make and adjust predictions; use text to confirm
o Infer and support with evidence
o Make a picture or mental image
o Monitor and fix-up
o Ask questions throughout the reading process
o Use text features (titles, headings, captions, graphic features)
o Summarize text; include sequence of main events
o Use main idea and supporting details to determine importance
o Determine and analyze author’s purpose and support with text
o Recognize literary elements (genre, plot, character, setting,
problem/resolution, theme)
o Recognize and explain cause-and-effect relationships
o Compare and contrast within and between text
o Skimming
o Paraphrasing
o Look for relationships
o Read ahead for clarification
 Monitors comprehension, which involves
o Knowing that comprehension is occurring
o Knowing what is being comprehended
o Knowing how to repair/fix-up comprehension
 Develops a positive attitude toward reading

(Adapted from Paris, Lipson, & Wixson; Cook, & The 2 Sisters,
TheDailyCafe.com)

22
The Twelve Systems of Strategic Actions used by Readers
1. Solving the words using a flexible range of strategies.
2. Self-monitoring their reading for accuracy and understanding and self-
correcting.
3. Searching for and using information.
4. Remembering information in summary form.
5. Sustaining fluent, phrased reading.
6. Adjusting reading in order to process a variety of text.
7. Making predictions.
8. Making connections.
9. Synthesizing new information.
10. Reading “between the lines” to infer what is not explicitly stated in the text.
11. Thinking analytically about a text to notice how it is constructed or how the
author has crafted language.
12. Thinking critically about a text. (Pinnell & Fountas)

Strategies Good Readers Use

 Monitor reader control
 Access prior knowledge
 Clarify purpose for reading
 Focus on major content
 Look back/reread confusing part
 Read ahead to clarify confusing points
 Consult dictionary or knowledgeable person
 Fit new material into personal experience
 Think aloud to make sure of understanding
 Create mental images to visualize vague description
 Take notes
 Summarize
 Use mapping and networking

23
Fix-Up Strategies
 Reread – It is OK to reread text that you’ve already read. Maybe you
misread a word or left out a word that holds the meaning to the text.

 Read ahead – You might want to continue reading for a couple of sentences if
you are confused. If the confusion does not clear after a couple of
sentences, try another strategy.

 Figure out the unknown words – You may use context clues, identify roots
and affixes, or use a dictionary to determine the meaning. Do not just skip
the word altogether.

 Look at sentence structure – Sometimes an author’s style of writing may

contain awkward sentence structure. Try moving the words around in your
head until they make better sense.

 Make a mental image – Take time to make a movie in your head. As you read
the descriptions of characters or settings, paint a picture. This strategy
will help you visualize and comprehend better.

 Define your purpose for reading – Ask yourself why you are reading. Reading
to learn or pass a test requires more concentration than reading for
enjoyment.

 Ask questions – If you ask questions as you read, you will be more actively
engaged with the text. You will be looking for answers to your questions, and
will remember what you read.

 Make predictions – As you read, think about what might happen next. You
will be making inferences and drawing conclusions about the characters and
plot.

 Stop to think – Every so often as you read, you should stop and think about
what you have read. If you don’t remember anything you have read, why
continue? Pause and summarize in your head.

 Make connections to what you already know – As you read you should be
thinking about how the information fits with what you know about yourself,
what you’ve read in other texts, and how things operate in the real world.
This will help you remember what you read.

24
  Look at the pictures, illustrations, charts, and graphs – These are used by
the author to help you understand what you are reading. Pictures and
illustrations help you visualize what you are reading. Charts and graphs are
used to present the information in a more visual manner. By closely
examining these, you can deepen your level of understanding.

 Read the author’s note – Sometimes the author will present background
information as an author’s note. By reading this section, you will be
preparing your brain to take in new information and connect it to what you
have already learned.

 Ask for help – When you are not understanding what you are reading, and
you do not know which fix-up strategy to use, ask someone. You might ask a
friend or you might need help from a teacher or parent.

 Stress to the students that they should not continue to read if they are not
able to summarize what they have read so far. If they do, they are just
wasting time “saying words” and they won’t be learning or understanding
anything from the text. (Esperanza Rising)

Informed Strategies for Learning (ISL)

Directly instructing students in strategic behavior tasks informs and
motivates students to become independent learners.

PROCEDURE

1. Introduce lesson by referring to a bulletin board, poster or a smartboard in

which the strategy, goal or metaphor is written.
2. State explicitly the strategy to be learned or the goal of the lesson.
3. Review previous lessons or pertinent background
4. Inform students about the strategy by discussing
a. What the strategy is
b. How it works
c. When and why it should be used
d. When it is not effective

25
 5. Encourage students’ discovery of what, how, and when strategies work by
helping generate analogies using metaphors.
6. Persuade students why the strategies promote reading and learning and why
they are worth the extra effort and time.
7. Model the effective use of the strategy with demonstration and some
examples.
8. Allow students to practice new strategies on relevant material.
9. Give corrective feedback and praise to students during discussions and after
practices so that they use the strategies properly.
10. Fade support so that students must take increasing initiative to recruit,
apply, and correct their own strategies.
11. Bridge the strategy to all parts of the curriculum, especially to content area
reading assignments. (Cook; Orange County Public schools)

ISL

 Instruction to entire class

 Extensive discussion
 Teacher-student interaction
 Students find strategies sensible and useful
 Strategic reading leads to self-directed learning

Graphic Organizers
Moore, Readence & Richardson depict graphic organizers as providing a
verbal and visual structure for new vocabulary, identifying and classifying major
relationships of concepts and vocabulary in a unit of study. Visual graphic examples
are time lines, diagrams, cartoons, pictures, flow charts, structured overviews,
pyramid designs, outlines, feature analysis charts, semantic or chapter mapping
charts.

Graphic organizers are used as a comprehension framework by the teacher

and students in the classroom for readiness, assimilation and post-graphic
activities. The graphic organizer facilitates small group discussions by providing a
means by which students can analyze and visualize the relationship of key concepts.

26
It also can be used effectively as a visual reference for full and rich discussion for
the whole class as concepts are studied and specific examples are related to them.

Semantic or Chapter Mapping

Mapping is a visual or graphic representation of key concepts or main ideas and
supporting details of oral or written composition and textbooks chapters.

Mapping is an alternative to notetaking and outlining. To develop a map:

 Identify central purpose (this may be the title of book and/or

chapter)

 Determine major idea (chapter or subheading)

 Determine supporting idea from each major idea

This strategy helps students organize information using a graphic organizer.

Mapping enables students to not only visualize relationships, but to categorize
them as well. As a direct teaching strategy that includes brainstorming and
teacher-led discussions, it provides opportunities for schema development and
enhancement, as well as prediction, hypothesizing and verification of content when
used as a pre-reading activity. It is also referred to as a web or concept map.

1. The teacher introduces a graphic organizer to the class. It can have several
different appearances. It can be shown as circles, squares, or ovals with
connecting lines.

2. The students read an assigned text.

3. Through class discussion, the teacher writes the main idea of the text in the
middle of the top circle.

4. The students share the supporting details of the main idea and place them in
circles that are connected to the main idea by lines.

This activity can also be used by students in cooperative groups or individually.

27
New Directions in Reading Instruction by the International Reading Association
Gertrude Whipple Professional Development Project

28