By: Brittany Osborne Carly Palmer Rebecca Shoniker T HE P OWER OF P RE -R EADING !

What do you and your students do prior to reading?

O BJECTIVES  Help your help students become actively engaged with a text prior to reading  Provide specific pre-reading strategies to improve comprehension and enhance engagement  Share additional resources and research based practices in Adolescent Literacy

D ON ’ T J UST T ELL …E NGAGE !  Access prior knowledge  Interact with portions of the text prior to reading  Make inferences, predict, draw comparisons  Identify problematic vocabulary  Construct meaning before reading

P ROBABLE P ASSAGES  “Probable Passage” is a strategy in which the teacher pre-selects and presents key words from a text before reading.  Students predict what the function of these words will be and then write a "gist" statement using the key words.  Probable Passage example.docx Probable Passage example.docx  Probable Passage example.docx Probable Passage example.docx

T EA P ARTY  “Tea Party” encourages active participation with pre-selected passages from a text.  Students are given an index card with a phrase from the text they are about to read and walk around the room to discuss their passages with their peers and make predictions about the text.  Tea Party Directions.docx Tea Party Directions.docx

T ALKING D RAWINGS  “Talking Drawings” is used to promote the use of prior knowledge by creating drawings of mental images on a topic, character, or event before reading a selection.  After the selection is read, the student constructs another drawing to see how their knowledge and thinking have changed.

T ALKING D RAWING E XAMPLES Narrative TextExpository Text

P OSSIBLE S ENTENCES  “Possible Sentences” provide direct instruction on the unfamiliar vocabulary of a reading selection by facilitating independent determination of the meaning based on context of the story  Possible Sentences Form.docx Possible Sentences Form.docx

KWL  Enhance this strategy by grouping students’ prior knowledge into categories to assist with questioning.  First, decide what topic you want discussed on the KWL chart.  Next, decide how you’ll record that information  Then, ask students what they know about the topic.  Make sure that, after completing the K column, students have a chance to group responses and label those groups.  Finally, remember that when you move from the K- column to the W-column, the point is to connect what they wonder about to what they’ve already told you.

R ESOURCES Beers, K.(2003). When kids can’t read: What teachers can do. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Taylor, D.B. (2006). Literacy strategies: Across the subject areas. Boston: Pearson.