Reading Strategies
What strategies will students learn and use to become better readers?
Visualize – While using this strategy, students use the text to make mental pictures of the content they are reading. Often, students can recall mental pictures faster than they can recall text. Visualizing the text allows students to develop mental pictures that can be called on easily and quickly.
Connect – This strategy emphasizes the student’s ability to connect the text to personal experience, to other text, or to the world. Students do this by diving into their own schema and using their prior knowledge to connect to new topics and ideas.
Question – With this strategy, students investigate the text, locate unclear ideas and earnestly question the reading. Developing questions about the reading allows the student to deepen his or her understanding because individually interrogating the text forces them to develop their own ideas, rather than answering teacher-facilitated questions.
Locate Key Points/Main Ideas – Students search the text to find key points and main ideas.
Activate Prior Knowledge - This strategy emphasizes the student’s ability to call upon previous experiences, information and ideas. Students should specifically call upon knowledge related to the text they are given.
Summarize – This strategy requires students to be able to identify ideas and details of a text and then provide a recap of what he or she read in a written format.
Predict – While using this strategy, students predict possible outcomes of a text based on hints found within the text. These hints could be headings, quotations, or any other objects that provide help when creating predictions.
Infer – While reading, students use inferring to actively create predictions, interpretations and conclusions about the information they are reading. Inferring is connected to predicting, but is often used while reading the text.
Determine Author’s Bias – This strategy capitalizes on the student’s ability to determine the opinions and thoughts of an author. Students examine the text structure, prejudices and thoughts of the author to determine his or her stance on a topic.