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With teaching over 15 years in a variety of settings ranging from rural to urban to progressive, and working with a variety of administrators, I have really made the rounds of using different instructional strategies to teach reading. From Stephanie Harvey and Fountas and Pinnell's guided reading-type instruction, to basal programs (ultimate worst!) to the Lucy Calkins scripted program, to my favorite: a totally blank canvas that is up to me to design, I have really tried a lot of strategies and techniques to teach reading. In this blog I have taken what I feel to be best practices to teach reading (my writing post will come soon!) and highlight key parts to how to make an outstanding reading program for your students. Let me repeat. If you have passion, consistency and some creativity, then you can create your own awesome reading program and I am going to show you how to do it! Don't be overwhelmed! I'm here to help you teach reading so that your kids become confident and passionate readers!
If you haven't checked out my previous post "Laying the Foundation for a Great Reading Program-Part 1" that deals with scheduling and structuring a reading class, please check that out!
I will start out by saying I don't believe there is a reading "program" out there that is great. I honestly don't. Reading programs feel really boring to both students and the teacher delivering the lessons. I believe it us up to teachers to learn how to connect with their students, building relationships every chance they get. I believe it's about being passionate as a reader yourself, so students see the expectation firsthand. They learn how wonderful reading is and how many doors it opens: opportunities, imagination and so much more. While teaching reading can be an art form, with these basics, you are sure to get your kids soaring as readers!
Know your readers. Figure out what topics interest them so that you can guide them to great book choices. Do they prefer reading nonfiction where new facts about a favorite topic can be discovered? Do they love a certain author's style or series where you can point them to more from that author? Pay attention to what your kids enjoy learning about so you can help them discover great books in this area too! The below strategies are generally used in specific instruction. I believe kids should be reading every day on their own too for pleasure. When they develop strategies to become better readers, they will want to read more and more on their own, until eventually you have a kid like mine who never wants to stop!
Strategies that help kids thrive as readers:
(Please use these as a framework for mini-lessons where you give direct instruction on these strategies. Students can then practice during their independent work time. I love to use picture books or a read aloud book to model these strategies. Using sticky notes, thinkmarks, or jot journals is a great way for students to show evidence of their thinking. Look for a post soon about journaling. Don't forget to click on the picture above for your free thinkmarks that will help your kids practice these essential skills! There are so many freebies in this post! Don't miss any of them!
Activate prior knowledge or schema. When kids have familiarity with a topic, new material latches onto the information they already have. This creates layered building blocks in their brain and students are much more involved and invested in their learning. Let's face it, as humans we are more comfortable with what we know, not what we don't know. The more prior knowledge students have about a topic or anything they read (from previous experiences like traveling, museums, sporting events, etc.) the better new knowledge can anchor into their memory.
2. Make meaningful connections between what you read and your own world. When you connect with what you are reading, comprehension grows, and you become more confident as a reader. There are three main kinds of connections you can model:
Text-to-self connections-These are connections that are made between the text and your own life. Some kids take this literal, meaning if you are reading a book and the character has traveled from a different country and has to go to a new school, students may make the mistake of making a comment like this, "But I've never traveled to a new country and gone to school in a new country!" Of course, the connection doesn’t have to align perfectly with the events of the story, but perhaps in this case it's the idea of being new somewhere and not being familiar/comfortable with different surroundings and people. This is why direct modeling is important and can easily be done with picture books or read aloud books. It is so important that we guide kids and teach them specific reading strategies so they can take off as learners!
Text-to-text connections are made between two or more texts. This could include events in stories, themes, characters' challenges, etc. Text-to-text connections can be made in nonfiction texts as well such as obstacles people have had to gone through, a particular environment, a situation or really anything that is similar between two texts! Texts don’t have to be books, but instead magazines, poetry, and anything else written.
Text-to-world connections are those where a text connects to something the reader has experienced in the bigger world such as the community, current events, something from the news, and more. When kids relate to the bigger world and see themselves as part as something greater, it helps them feel connected.
Making connections is a great way to develop comprehension because by using this strategy, readers are connecting with familiar things, helping them grow as readers and thinkers!
3. Create mental images so that kids can visualize what they read. Kids often gravitate towards graphic novels and books with pictures because they are hesitant to use their imaginations to create their own visual images in their mind. I'm finding so many students in this boat! Help students see that their imaginations are valuable by letting them doodle, draw, or sketch what they are picturing. I love using a reading journal for this type of work where kids can have a blank canvas to jot down their thinking and develop their mental images. For visual learners, this can be a great strategy to remember what they read! Reading journals/jot journals or sketch books can be a great way to capture mental images. Another option is to have blank comic strip boards or graphic organizers designed for images to help organize their thinking through imagery. (Click on the image above for 9 free graphic organizers to help kids implement these strategies!)
4. Ask questions to dig deeper is an important part of developing critical thinking skills. I love teaching kids not to view things at face value. What you see on the news or read in a book, may not be absolute truth. There are biases in the world, so let's teach kids to not only ask questions, but view content from multiple perspectives and then connect the dots to form their own conclusions. This isn't just about asking questions, but also to hunt for answers and be passionate to find truth. You can have kids code T for answers found in text, I for answers have to be inferred, and OS for answers have to be found by using an outside source.
Readers ask questions to clarify meaning, predict what might happen, determine a style of writing, focus on certain parts of the next. When readers hear questions from classmates, it inspires others to dig deeper into new thinking. Readers not only ask questions while reading, but they are also excited to find answers.
To get kids going and take their thinking deeper teach kids to ask themselves these questions:
Is there a connection between my thinking and my question or topic?
Does my thinking connect with what others have shared?
How can I support my points? What evidence is there or what experience do I have that agree with my thinking?
Does what I want to say take my thinking further? Am I digging deeper?
5. Infer and make predications. This happens when students draw on prior knowledge (either theirs or something that happened in the book) and use clues to think about what would happen next. I like to think of being a detective here by looking for little hints in which the author has given us to predict future events. Students will be confirming or contradicting their predications as they read. With inferring, focus on the why behind what the author is saying. This strategy can be applied to what the theme of the story is or what the author's purpose is.
6. Determine what's important in nonfiction texts. How many of your students highlight almost an entire passage because they think every word is important? I find this to be so common when students enter my class. They need to be taught that not everything on the page is important. When we determine what is the most valuable information in nonfiction texts, we need to help students expand what they already know (prior knowledge) and see how this weaves into the new material. Only when we are able to filter out the most important information are we able to come to a main idea.
Some strategies to determine what is important include:
Helping students connect with their prior knowledge.
Look for text features like subheadings that tend to highlight the key point of that section.
What can we ignore? Are there sentences or parts that aren't really relevant to the main ideas?
How might the author's hook or background story be supporting the main idea?
Is this a text that I should carefully read, or can I skim?
As you read, jot down notes in the margin, sticky notes or jot journal.
Highlight or underline key phrases, words or information.
Pay close attention to the first and the last lines of each section because important information is often located there
Jot down surprising information because most times that will be new information
When students determine importance in what they read, they show evidence of deep understanding. The above strategies and questions can be taught explicitly.
7. And finally, synthesizing information is a way to put pieces together to form a deeper understanding. Using this strategy, students tell what's important in a way that makes sense without telling too much. I like to think of making cookies to represent synthesis. There are many ingredients to the recipe and on their own, they have unique properties or characteristics. But when mixing them together they make something totally different. Likewise, when students gather different information, they put it all together. At first they may think one thing, but it emerges into a different idea. At the end a final conclusion or idea is formed with all of the information together.
Students can synthesize information through summary, but also display new learning and new thinking as they go. It's really an evolution of their thinking. Help them put it all together! Some ideas that illustrate what synthesis is all about could be:
Developing a field guide of birds or trees using science texts (wouldn't it be neat to infuse art into this project and have kids sketch out the birds/trees?)
Notice how our thinking evolves as we read by sharing thinking in reading logs or journals
Jotting on sticky notes to revise their thinking
Create a video, podcast or e-book to summarize and show how their thinking has changed
Reading is truly a foundational skill beyond the classroom. From being able to read a restaurant menu, to putting together a piece of furniture, to understanding the task and being able to write an eloquent speech for a business meeting to earn that promotion, reading and writing go hand in hand. Being a strong reader opens endless doors. What are some doors that have been opened for you or your students? If you struggle/d with reading why do you think that was/is?
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