1. DECIDE RELATE INFER VISUALISE EVALUATE

2. Before a journey begins, we mentally map out our route. Before we tackle any reading we imagine where it will take us. This is helpful because it tells us what we expect from the text, or helps us to realise what we want from it. By looking at our predictions and expectations now, we can EVALUATE our reading in meaningful ways at a later stage.

3. Why am I reading this? What can I do to make the reading more purposeful? What reading strategies might be most useful here? What predictions can I make about the text? Why am I making those particular predictions? How will this end?

4. We bring all our previous learning and experience with us to our reading. Consequently, we relate on a personal level to texts and texts relate to each other. As we look at the text, it may sit in a landscape that is familiar to us with recognisable landmarks and signs that will be useful. The emerging reader may find they’re in unrecognisable territory because the subject matter, the style or the form are impossible to relate to. Pupils should therefore be encouraged to actively seek the connections that will aid understanding and make the textual landscape more familiar. It’s useful to make links to prior reading and learning and to aspects of their own lives or the media as they find connections that help them to understand and explore unfamiliar reading material.

5. Have I come across this kind of text before? What should I expect from a piece of writing like this? Have I seen these ideas anywhere else? Does this connect to my prior learning from this or any other subject? How do I feel about this? Why? Do I agree with this? Why/why not? Will this change the way I feel or what I think about this?

6. Decoding surface meaning is obviously essential to our basic comprehension of texts. Frequently, however, it is necessary to dig beneath the surface and discover the less obvious meanings being implied by the writer. Inference requires higher order thinking and leads to interpretation and the possibility that there may be multiple meanings to sift through and analyse. This can often be the most rewarding type of reading as the reader claims ownership over the meaning they have inferred for themselves.

7. What is the writer suggesting here? Is there another way to read this? Can this be read in a number of ways? What is the tone of the writing here? How does the writer seem to feel about this subject?

8. Proficient readers are good at building mental images as they read: picturing the scenes, situations, arguments or processes that the writer describes. The more able might be encouraged to explain how the writer has conjured these images. It is also useful to visualise the reading process itself in order to understand it more clearly. In this way, pupils stand back from the text to ask themselves where they are in the reading journey, how it might continue and what signposts have directed them through it.

9. How do I picture this? Is the image a positive one? Does the writer successfully conjure the image they are aiming at? How/why not? Where am I on the reading journey at this point? What signposts has the writer given? Where might the text go from here?

10. Whereas it seems most apt to evaluate at the end of the reading process, and indeed this is a valuable part of the reading journey, it is also important to monitor and review continually during and throughout the reading of extended texts. Pupils should be encouraged to use techniques of problem solving in relation to what they read: turning the “clunks” of getting stuck into “clicks” of understanding. As they encounter unfamiliar words or challenging expressions, readers use a range of methods to make meaning: hypothesising possible interpretations, using the context, linking to similar words etc. Thus, successful readers are able to tackle challenging texts independently and with confidence.

11. Why isn’t this making sense? Did I read it properly the first time? What clues are there in the rest of the text to help me? How did the text match my expectations? How successful was the text in meeting its aims? Did I enjoy reading this? Was it useful?