During and After Reading Strategies What strategies might I use with my students that will help them become more effective readers and independent learners as they interact with the text?

During Reading Teaching students to use comprehension strategies before, during, and after reading can improve their understanding of texts. Comprehension strategies help students self-monitor the information gathered from their reading. These strategies provide students with the tools that enable them to solve reading problems throughout life.

Some of the research-based strategies include: Monitoring comprehension Using graphic organizers Answering and generating questions Recognizing text structure Summarizing - Note taking Identifying confusing parts

Teaching Tip To ensure that a reading strategy becomes a regular part of a student’s thinking, actively instruct them how to use it.

Key Steps Introduce only one strategy at a time. Provide repeated practice using short articles or excerpts. Model the activity yourself as a way to explain it to students. When a strategy is to be used individually, practice as a whole class to compare various ideas of how it can work. Provide guided practice and feedback over a period of time. Provide self-reflective time on effectiveness of strategies. Use strategy repeatedly, slowly releasing responsibility to the student.

Help students to understand: Why am I reading this? It is the responsibility of the teacher to help students pull out essential information by giving them a purpose for their reading. Without it, students often get lost in the details. When we give our students a clear purpose, we give them a lens through which to read the text. “By the time you finish tonight, be able to discuss the three causes of the Civil War.” When the instructional purpose is clear, it gives students guidance in how they should hold their thinking of the important ideas in the text.

What do good readers do? Good readers skip, skim, and scan text continually, based on their purpose. They also reread, slow down, and reread again if it suits their purpose. Good readers know a purpose will help them focus their reading. They also know that purpose determines how they read the material. Good readers approach assigned texts with a result in mind. They consider what they will have to do with the information after reading.

Good and Bad Voices Without a purpose for reading, minds wander. Give students a purpose and have they pay attention to the voices in their heads. We have different voices that go on inside our heads as we read. If readers recognize this, they have a powerful monitoring device.

Good and Bad Voices Readers Hear Students can be taught to distinguish between the “voices in their head” while reading: Reciting voice -The voice readers hear when they are only reciting the words and not drawing meaning from the text. When this voice is on, the reader does not remember what they read. Conversation voice - The voice that has a conversation with the text. It represents the readers’ thinking as they talk back to the text. This voice can take two forms: Interacting voice - The voice inside the reader’s head that makes connections, asks questions, identifies confusions, agrees and disagrees with ideas. This voice deepens the reader’s understanding of the text. Distracting voice - This voice pulls the reader’s head away from the meaning of the text.It begins a conversation with the reading but gets distracted by a question, idea, or connection.

How do you ‘hold thinking’ so you can remember and reuse what you read? Having a lot of different tools not only helps keep the interest high, but also helps kids have different options for remembering what they have read.

Give students something to look for and write as they read Give students something to look for and write as they read. Model different ways that readers mark text and hold their thinking while they read.

Questioning Texts Question Question Question Answer Answer Answer Questions I asked that I can answer by reading the text Questions I asked that I could answer by asking my teacher Question I asked that I could answer by inferring Question Question Question Answer Answer Answer

Double Entry Diary Show your students how to use a double entry diary, Throughout the year you can provide different options with these diaries for marking thinking. This tool is especially helpful when reading nonfiction texts.

Questioning Text Quote Connection (Reminds me of) Question ( I wonder) Confusion ( I don’t understand) Offer students a choice in ways to respond to the text. If you ask them only to make a connection and they do not have enough background knowledge, they may not be able to respond. By giving choice you meet more students’ needs.

Active Readers are involved in their reading - they do something while they read. 1. Mark one quote in the text and have a conversation about the quote by connecting it to prior knowledge. 2. Write a question that doesn’t have a simple answer. 3. Visualize what is read. 4. Determine what is important in the text. 5. Make inferences while reading 6. Know strategies to use when you get stuck.

Be sure students understand that ALL readers get stuck and that there are ways to get “Unstuck” 1. Trust the author. Don’t panic if at first the text doesn’t make sense. The author will slowly reveal clues. 2. Ask questions. Quite likely someone else may have the same question. Someone else may be able to clear up the confusion. 3. Slow down. Give yourself time to read, reread. and paraphrase what you’ve read. 4. It’s okay to go back. Sometimes readers go back and reread confusing parts of text.

Possible Uses of Highlighters Suggestion: Photocopy a short piece of text, a page from a textbook or novel, a graph or a word problem. Make a transparency, and model places in the text where you highlight. Give students an opportunity to do the same. Use students’ highlighted sheets to drive the discussion.

Highlighter Use Give students a yellow highlighter to mark places that are confusing Use a pink highlighter to mark places that they understand well enough to explain to someone else in the class. Use any color highlighter to emphasize the reader’s purpose in the text. Develop questions about the text to enhance understanding Combine background knowledge with text to draw conclusions Think beyond the literal meaning of the text Determine what is important in the text Recognize signals that they are confused and use strategies to repair comprehension

Another strategy for active reading: sticky notes When students can’t write on the text, sticky notes make it possible to still mark thinking there. Sticky notes can flag a page and mark a line so readers can • find a part quickly • mark a confusing part to get clarification • hold thinking to share later • ask a question of the text •make a connection to the text

Getting inside the reader’s mind As readers become adept at using strategies to comprehend what they read, provide them the opportunity to choose from a variety of strategies they have learned. This way when on strategy isn’t working, readers become adept at choosing one that may be more helpful. Readers benefit from talk with others, so working individually first to read and record thinking is followed by group time to process their thinking.

Chart the strategies modeled Chart strategies learned and refer to them often. Make sense of text by: Visualizing a picture in our heads Rereading a portion of the text Slowing down our reading rate Asking questions while we read Making connections to what we already know Using a purpose to sort factual information Finding answers to our questions

Accountability for active reading To hold reader’s accountable for being active while they read, assign points for demonstrating the interactions with the text. Use their thinking tool ( highlighting, sticky notes, double entry diaries, etc) during group discussions. Have each group member record on a transparency one or more of their ideas to share with the whole class Award points for demonstrating thinking while reading. One example: 10 points for sticky notes demonstrating thinking over 25 pages of reading.

During Reading Strategy Instruction Ideas See pages 114-142 in Subjects Matter for during and after reading strategies: See Tools for Teaching Content Literacy from the strategy called DR-TA (directed reading-thinking activity) to Academic Notebooks for during reading strategies

After Reading The after-reading phase of the process occurs when the reader finishes reading the written text. The reader takes time to think about what he knew before the reading and what he learned or what connections he made during the reading, and then he links this information together to build new knowledge

After reading strategies This step expands prior knowledge, builds connections, and deepens understanding discussing accuracy of predictions summarizing the key ideas connecting and compare information from texts to experience and knowledge explaining and describing new ideas and information in own words retelling story in own words including setting, characters, and sequence of important events discussing and comparing authors and illustrators reflecting on the strategies that helped the most and least and why

After reading strategies See the following links for after reading strategies: Somebody Wanted But So: http://www.allamericareads.org/lessonplan/strategies/after/somebody.htm Sketch to Stretch: http://www.allamericareads.org/lessonplan/strategies/after/sts.htm

Further strategies See pages 120-143 in Subjects Matter for After Reading Strategies.

Assignment Determine the during and after strategies that will best support your student that is your focus during this class. Send the instructor a three paragraph reflection of why that strategies chosen will best support your student. Complete your lesson plan by adding during and after reading strategies and send these additions to the instructor.