Effective Reading Strategies

“The purpose of reading is understanding.” Reading IS Thinking “The purpose of reading is understanding.”

While reading, you must recognize the signs of confusion: 1. The voice inside your head is not interacting with the text while reading; 2. The camera inside your head used to visualize reading is turned off; 3. Your mind wanders away from the reading; 4. You do not remember what has just been read; 5. You cannot answer questions asked to clarify reading; 6. You cannot remember a character being introduced when the character is reencountered in the text.

Strategic Thinking “True comprehension goes beyond literal understanding and involves the reader’s interaction with text. If students are to become thoughtful, insightful readers, they must extend their thinking beyond a superficial understanding of the text.” -Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis This means you must move beyond reading just to answer the questions at the end of a text!

Reading Strategies Connect to the Text Ask Questions Expand Vocabulary Predict & Prove Sense It Decide What’s Important Make Inferences Then Draw Conclusions Summarize and Synthesize Check Your Understanding Build Fluency

Strategy 1: Connect to the Text Text to Self Text to Text Text to World You will comprehend what your read better when you think about the connections you can make between the text, your life, and the larger world.

Strategy 2: Ask Questions “Questioning is the strategy that keeps readers engaged. When readers ask questions, they clarify understanding and forge ahead to make meaning. Asking questions is at the heart of thoughtful reading.” -Harvey and Goudvis Ask yourself questions about what you are reading and always talk about what you are wondering while you are reading.

Strategy 3: Expand Vocabulary “The larger the reader’s vocabulary (either oral or print), the easier it is to make sense of the text.” -Report of the National Reading Panel We study vocabulary in class because you must know what most of the words mean before you can understand what you are reading.

Strategy 4: Predict and Prove (Guess and Check) “Research suggests that when students make predictions their understanding increases and they are more interested in the reading material.” -Fielding, Anderson, Pearson, Hanson Good readers anticipate what’s coming next. When you make predictions, you are aware when you become confused while reading. When an event doesn’t match a prediction, good readers rethink and revise their thinking.

Strategy 5: Sense It “Visualizing is a comprehension strategy that enables readers to make the words on a page real and concrete.” -Keene and Zimmerman While reading, create a movie of the text in your head. When you create scenarios and pictures in your minds while reading, your level of engagement in the text increases and your attention doesn’t wander.

Strategy 6: Decide What’s Important “Thoughtful readers grasp essential ideas and important information when reading. Readers must differentiate between less important ideas and key ideas that are central to the meaning of the text.” -Harvey and Goudvis Determining important ideas and information in text is central to making sense of reading. Depending on your purpose for reading, you must sift and sort essential information.

Strategy 7: Make Inferences, Then Draw Conclusions “Inferring is at the intersection of taking what is known, garnering clues from the text, and thinking ahead to make a judgment, discern a theme, or speculate about what is to come.” -Harvey and Goudvis When text clues merge with the your prior knowledge and the answers to your questions point toward a conclusion about an underlying theme or idea in the text, you are engaging in inferential reading. If you don’t make inferences, then you will not grasp the deeper meaning of the texts you read.

Strategy 8: Summarize and Synthesize “Synthesizing is putting together separate parts into a new whole….a process akin to working a jigsaw puzzle.”- Harvey and Goudvis Synthesizing is when you combine new information with existing knowledge to form an original idea or interpretation.

Strategy 9: Check Your Understanding “If confusion disrupts meaning, readers need to stop and clarify their understanding. Readers may use a variety of strategies to “fix up” comprehension when meaning goes awry.” -Harvey and Goudvis Many students lack awareness of how they think when they read. Others are aware that meaning is breaking down but they don’t know what to do about it. When you lose focus or “space out” while reading, you need to use “fix-up” strategies to repair your understanding.

Strategy 10: Build Fluency “Fluency is important because it frees students to understand what they read.” -Report of the National Reading Panel Fluency is when you can read orally with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. Fluency is a major factor for reading comprehension.

Using Fix-up Strategies When you become confused while reading: 1. Place sticky notes by a passage that is confusing; 2. Make connections from texts to the real world or other texts you have read; 3. Make predictions about what will happen in text; 4. Stop and reflect about what you are reading; 5. Visualize what you are reading; 6. Use print conventions to recognize voice inflections and infer meaning of words; 7. Retell what you have read; 8. Reread what you have read as necessary to understand confusing text better; 9. Notice patterns in text structure; 10. Adjust reading rate to meet the level of demand the text requires .