Glossary of Featured Reading Strategies
The strategies listed below—all research-based and classroom-tested—are at the heart of
the video segments included in Reading Strategies in Action. For more detailed explanations
as well as information about implementing these and other reading strategies, refer to the excellent
sources listed in "Recommended Resources for All Content Areas" which can be found on Disc
One: Getting Started.
Active reading
The term active reading covers a broad range of during reading strategies designed to improve
comprehension and retention by increasing the reader's involvement in the text. One example of active
reading may be found in Karen Ziegler's use of post-it notes in her exemplary eighth-grade science
lesson. Another is Roxanne Richardson's use of reading symbols in her
best practice ninth-grade English lesson.
Admit slips
This before reading strategy is an effective means of tapping
prior knowledge or encouraging students to
make predictions about reading. At the beginning of class
or as a brief homework assignment, students are given a slip of paper or index card along with a
specific prompt—printed on the paper, written on the board, or delivered orally by the teacher.
Students may keep the admit slips throughout class to refer to and add to as they read.
Alternatively, the teacher may ask for volunteers to read their admit slips to the class
or the students may turn them in so the teacher can read some of them aloud and respond to
them. See Edie Mariani's exemplary language arts lesson for an application of this strategy.
Context clues
Good readers use this strategy during reading to help them understand unfamiliar vocabulary.
Students determine the meaning of the new word by looking at the words around it. Teachers
can facilitate the process by introducing students to important new words before reading.
Research shows that even a brief amount of vocabulary instruction greatly improves students'
understanding of new words in context. Linda Dale uses this strategy with her high school arts
and humanities students in her best practice lesson on modern art. Another demonstration of the
strategy may be found in James Coleman's best practice lesson for his sixth-grade science students.
Decoding
This broad term covers a variety of strategies used to help readers understand unfamiliar words,
including breaking words down into their parts. Applications of vocabulary decoding strategies
used before reading may be found in Jane Clouse's best practice lesson (seventh-grade science)
and in the during reading segment of Linda Dale's best practice lesson (high school arts
and humanities).
Graphic organizers
Graphic organizers provide students with visual representations for their thinking and learning
before, during, or after reading. They are effective for making abstract concepts more
concrete, organizing and categorizing information, and depicting relationships among ideas.
The specific graphic organizers listed below are modeled in the classroom video included in
Reading Strategies in Action.
The herringbone provides readers with a framework for recognizing and recording main
ideas and supporting details during and after reading. The categories included in the
diagram are often the main idea (the spine of the fish) and "who, where, what, why, when, and how"
(the ribs), but they can be altered to fit the particular text students are reading. Marc Milanich
uses this strategy with his eighth-grade social studies students in an exemplary lesson about the
British in pre-Revolutionary War America.
H-maps provide a visual representation—a large H-shaped outline—for comparing
two concepts or items. Contrasting characteristics are listed on the vertical columns of the H,
while similarities are listed on the connecting bar. Judith Painter uses this strategy in her
exemplary high school arts and humanities lesson on Gilgamesh.
Venn diagrams are graphic organizers used for comparison. They consist of two or more
overlapping circles, each of which represents a different item or concept. Students list the
similarities between the items in the intersecting area and list differences in the parts of
the circles that are separate. Along with H-maps, Judith Painter uses Venn diagrams in her
exemplary arts and humanities lesson on Gilgamesh.
K-W-L
Sixth-grade science teacher James Coleman uses this well-known strategy before, during, and after reading
in his best practice lesson on levers. A modified version of K-W-L may be found in the before reading
and the after reading segments from Elizabeth Vander Meer's exemplary high school language arts
lesson on the Middle Passage. K-W-L is also the subject of an interview segment with Angela Lockhart,
a Pike County Central High School arts and humanities teacher.
Literature circle
Alternatively called "reading circle," this group approach to reading can improve and
extend students' understanding of what they read. Although it is often used with fiction, it also
works well with informational text. The strategy may involve students assuming roles within their
circle, i.e., "leader," "summarizer," "connector," etc. A variation
on this idea may be found in Jennifer Bernhard's best practice seventh-grade social studies lesson.
Paired reading
Julie Hundley uses this collaborative during reading strategy in her best practice lesson
with her eighth-grade science students. In a paired reading, one student reads aloud and the
other listens and then summarizes what he or she heard as the main ideas.
Predicting
In this before reading strategy—often a component of more comprehensive strategies—readers
make predictions about the content of a text. Predicting helps students focus on what they are going
to read and encourages them to be more active readers as they compare the actual text with their
predictions. Predicting is embedded in the reciprocal teaching strategy
demonstrated in Beth Vander Meer's exemplary tenth-grade English lesson and in Sharma Nachlinger's use
of text-to-self, text-to-world, and
text-to-text in her best practice sixth-grade language arts lesson.
Previewing
This before reading strategy involves looking at text features—illustrations, titles,
headings, tables, etc.—for clues about content. For examples of previewing, see Joe Matthews'
best practice tenth-grade science lesson and James Coleman's best practice middle school science
lesson.
Prior knowledge
Research shows that comprehension improves when readers think about or discuss what they know
about a topic before reading. Tapping prior knowledge is an important part of several
other reading strategies, including K-W-L, anticipation guides, directed
reading/thinking, and predicting. Several of the teachers featured in
Reading Strategies in Action model the use of prior knowledge: James Coleman, Jane Clouse,
Linda Dale, Rich Graviss, Edie Mariani, and Beth Vander Meer.
Question/answer relationships (QAR)
Ninth-grade geography teacher Rich Graviss uses QAR before, during, and after reading to
illustrate the relationship between questions and answers and to help his students improve their
comprehension. In his best practice ninth-grade geography lesson, he discusses three types of questions
used in QAR with his students.
Text-explicit questions can be answered with wording that comes directly from the text.
Factual questions fall into this category.
Text-implicit questions require the reader to draw conclusions and make inferences based
on the information found in the text. To answer the question, the reader must engage in higher level
thinking: interpreting, explaining, summarizing, defining, analyzing, etc.
Script-implicit questions or prior knowledge questions
ask readers to predict outcomes based on their own experience.
Read-alouds
Read-alouds offer opportunities for teachers to model fluency, build students' comprehension,
and develop students' vocabularies. This strategy appears in two best practice lessons: Linda Dale's
high school arts and humanities class on modern art and Jane Clouse's global warming lesson with her
seventh-grade science class.
Reading symbols
Students in Roxanne Richardson's ninth-grade language arts class use this strategy
during and after reading. By marking the text they are reading with symbols, students become
more active readers. After reading, they can use these symbols to revisit passages that may be
particularly important, interesting, confusing, surprising, etc.
Reciprocal teaching
Reciprocal teaching leads to the mastery of important thinking skills including summarizing,
questioning, clarifying, and predicting. After the teacher models these skills and the students
practice them, students assume the responsibility for using the skills to learn and teach new
material to small groups. This strategy is modeled in Elizabeth Vander Meer's exemplary lesson
on the Black Holocaust in her tenth-grade literature and composition class.
SQ3R
This strategy provides an overall structure for before, during, and after reading. Students
begin by surveying or previewing the text, looking for text features
that will help them make predictions about content and begin to create
a scaffold for their learning. Based on their survey, they develop questions that they will
answer as they read. After they read the selection, they recite—tell a partner
what they have learned and listen to the partner's recitation. Last, they review their questions
and answers to make sure they haven't missed any important concepts. For applications of this strategy,
see Joe Matthews' best practice lesson with his tenth-grade integrated science students and
Linda Dale's best practice lesson with her high school arts and humanities class.
Summarizing
This strategy for understanding and retaining information has been the subject of extensive
research. Edie Mariani asks her seventh-grade language arts students to summarize the content
of an article in her lesson on persuasive and informational text; and the same strategy comes
into play in Marc Milanich's use of the herringbone graphic organizer
in his exemplary eighth-grade social studies lesson.
Text-to-self, text-to-world, and text-to-text
Sharma Nachlinger uses this strategy before reading to tap her sixth-grade language arts
students' prior knowledge and to help them
make predictions about what they are going to read. As the wording suggests,
"text-to-self" involves students connecting what they read to their own lives,
"text-to-world" is connecting their reading to other people and events, and
"text-to-text" is making connections with other reading. This strategy is commonly
used throughout the reading process (before, during, and after).
Word sorts
In this vocabulary development strategy, appropriate for before and during reading, students
sort vocabulary terms into categories. The goal is to help them recognize semantic relationships
among important concepts in their reading. One type of word sort is "closed": that is, the
teacher provides the categories for the students. In an "open sort," students develop
their own categories for sorting vocabulary. An application of this strategy is included in Joe
Matthews' best practice lesson on sun, moon, and earth systems in his 10th-grade science class.
Judith Painter also uses a variation of this strategy in her exemplary arts and humanities
lesson—having students sort unfamiliar nouns into place names, people's names, and names of things.
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