The keys to becoming a better reader Reading Strategies The keys to becoming a better reader

Reading Efficiently by Reading Intelligently Good reading strategies help you to read in a very efficient way. Using them, you aim to get the maximum benefit from your reading with the minimum effort. Knowing what you want to know The first thing to ask yourself is: why you are reading the text? Are you reading with a purpose or just for pleasure? What do you want to know after reading it? Once you know this, you can examine the text to see whether it is going to move you towards this goal.

Strategy #1 - Questioning Search for reasons behind events and characters’ feelings Ask yourself these questions as you read: Who is telling the story? Why do the characters act as they do? What causes events to happen? When does the action peak or climax? How does the setting affect the story?

Strategy #2 - Visualizing Picture characters, events, and setting to help you understand what’s happening. When you read fiction, pay attention to the images that form in your mind as you read. “The car gave a nasty wobble. Glancing out of his window, Harry saw the smooth, black, glassy surface of the water…the nose of the car dropped…’Noooooo!’ Ron yelled, swinging the steering wheel around…” (74-75, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets).

Strategy #3 – Making Connections There are 3 types of connections: TEXT to TEXT TEXT to SELF TEXT to WORLD Text to text = making connections or identifying similarities between two books or a book and a movie

Strategy #3 – Connections continued Text to self = identifying a similarity between a part of the book (character, setting, conflict, ideas, etc.) and your own life or thoughts Text to world = finding things from the story that share commonalities with current issues in the world, or common cultural bonds

Strategy #4 – Predict Try to figure out what will happen next and how the story might end. Why is this important??? As you find evidence to form hunches, you also ask questions, recall facts, reread, skim, infer, draw conclusions, and, ultimately comprehend the text more fully. In other words, creating your own predictions about what might happen makes the story more interesting for you!

Strategy #5 – Clarify and Evaluate Stopping and thinking about what you’ve read every so often can also be called “chunking”. It is a way of summarizing the information into manageable pieces! Clarifying, or making yourself clear about certain parts of the story (character, details, conflicts, setting, events…) helps you to understand the text as a whole. Evaluating is just a fancy word for forming your own opinion about what you’re reading with supporting facts/reasons, etc. This happens during reading, and after you have finished reading. Example: After reading Walk Two Moons, I feel that the twist at the end about Sal’s mom was heartbreaking, but ultimately uplifting because Sal is such a good person who has gone through so much but still has hope for others.

Strategy #6 - Inferring Making an inference is just a way of saying that you are taking information given to you by the author and characters, combining with what you already know (as a person and a reader), and drawing a conclusion about something.

Reading strategies are just that: strategies, or tools to help you understand what you are reading. Think about what strategies might work best for you…everyone is different! The goal is for us all to get to the same place, even if we use different routes to get there.