Browsed by
Category: Teacher

Reading Strategies 1: Starting Points – Recall

Reading Strategies 1: Starting Points – Recall

Comments 0 Comment

Over the years, I’ve encountered many students who read beautifully when asked to read out loud.  They rarely stumble over a word.  They read with good pacing and expression.  They are simply a delight to listen to, and they’re proud of their ability to read orally with grace and confidence.  Some of these students, however, cannot recall what they’ve read almost as soon as they’ve finished reading.

 

ORAL READER OR SILENT READER? DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU

The first question I have for these students is whether they tend to recall the story or information better when they read silently or aloud.  Each person is different, and it’s OK, perfectly wonderful in fact, to figure out which is best for YOU.  If you tend to recall text information better when you read silently in your head, please please please – do that!  If you, on the other hand, remember the ideas you’ve read about better when you’ve read out loud, please, please, please DO THAT!  While it may not be possible to read out loud at all times, when you can read in a whisper (in class, for example) or read loudly (at home, for example).  Do what works best for you.

 

STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE RECALL

There are still some students who have poor recall of what they’ve read no matter how they read – silently or out loud.  Here are some strategies that might help you!

  1. Stop after every few paragraphs.  Ask yourself: What was that part all about?  What happened?
  2. Write some key ideas on a sticky note or in your journal.  If you’re reading nonfiction: What information was described? What was explained? If you’re reading fiction: What action occurred? What was the character thinking? doing? saying?  Was the setting described? What did the setting ‘look like’ in your mind?
  3. After each page, write ONE SENTENCE that sums up the page.  What was the most important thing?  If you had to write a title for that page – as if it was a book or movie or video game on its own, what would you call it?
  4. After each chapter, write the most important events or ideas in that chapter.

 

WHY IT WORKS

Stopping to write, or rather KNOWING you’re going to stop to write can help a reader stay focussed on the information and ideas in the text.  When you know that in a few minutes you’re going to have to put something to paper, you’re more likely to stay focussed, to concentrate and to think about what you’re reading AS you are reading it.

I can hear some of you thinking, “OH NO!  Now, not only do I have to READ, but I have to WRITE while I read.  Double yuck!”  And it’ true.  This is not a strategy anyone wants to use forever, but the thing is, you won’t have to!  It’s something that you will use a lot at first, until focus and recall are not as big a problem for you.

 

ALL READERS NEED TO STOP, THINK, RECORD

I still use this sticky note strategy of writing what I ‘recall’ when reading more difficult text, and YES, text can be difficult for even the most accomplished readers.  Dense text that is full of challenging vocabulary (I like to use the analogy of the physics textbooks that gave me big, fat goosebumps in high school because I was so afraid of the content, so unsure of myself as a scientist), text that stuffs new facts and information into a few sentences like sardines in a can, text that tends to jump from one setting or time to another, one narrator to another, and text that may just be WEIRD because of the author’s voice or style.

 

PARAPHRASE MEANS: IN YOUR OWN WORDS

It’s important to remember that all sticky notes or notes in your journal should be in YOUR OWN WORDS! Try not to just copy off the page. Copying can be done rather mindlessly, without much attention paid to what’s being copied (I’ll bet that you could copy words in German, or Italian, or Portuguese without ever really knowing what they mean!). The whole point of this strategy is to add mindfulness to your reading, so putting ideas in your own words, or paraphrasing when you do sticky notes means that you MUST pay attention to what’s going on, you MUST understand, at least to some degree, the ideas in the text. Writing in your own words means you’ve processed the information, and now it belongs to YOU!

In order to illustrate the strategy for you, I’ll use a text we used in Grade 8 nonfiction recently called “Texting While Driving” from Car and Driver by Michael Austin, June 2009.

Here’s the text we were reading.  We numbered the paragraphs to remind us to stop and think after each one.  In this exercise, we wanted to record the ideas that were most important to us from each paragraph, and our purpose for reading was to understand why texting and driving is not a good idea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here are some of our notes.  We paraphrased, selecting only the most important information for our purposes.

 

No one wants to use a strategy like this one for everything they read, every time they sit down to read something.  However, if you have trouble remembering what you’ve read, please try the sticky note strategies in this post.  I promise that you will eventually be able to drop the strategy for most of your reading.  It may take some time, but it’ll happen.

Why Read Strategically?

Why Read Strategically?

Comments 0 Comment

“Reading” – the word conjures up different images, emotions, and thoughts in us, depending on our prior experiences. For some students the word symbolizes relaxation, a time to delve into the world of stories or a time to learn about things that interest them. The thought of reading gives them the ‘warm fuzzies’ and maybe they associate it with a comfy couch, snuggling under the covers with a good book, lying on the grass in the sunshine while taking magical adventures through the power of story.

 

For other students the word “reading” conjures up a very different picture. For these students, “reading” inspires a pit in the stomach, the thought of endless minutes of boredom, a struggle to ‘say the words on the page’ in their heads, or a long wait for the whole ordeal to be over (“Mo-om!  Is my 20-30 minutes up yet?”). Maybe they envision themselves on an uncomfortable chair in the classroom, the clock ticking their lives away, all that time spent NOT doing more enjoyable things, like soccer or skating, like playing video games, participating in sports, creating art, hanging out with friends.

 

THINGS THAT GET IN THE WAY OF READING ENJOYMENT

Of course, there are many students who don’t fit either of these extreme categories. They like to read sometimes, if it’s a good book, but don’t always LOVE to read. When a student lets me know one way or the other that he/she has little interest in reading, a few things immediately come to my mind:

a) This student has not found his/her type of book, genre, authors . . . yet (Yes, I’m that kind of determined teacher, not just because I want students to love reading as I do, but because I know how important it is in our world today to be a good reader.)
b) This student is struggling to actually read the words on the page
c) This student may be just reading the words on the page, but not really
reading IDEAS

 

WHAT I DO TO TRY TO BREAK THE BARRIERS:  ‘A’ AND ‘B’

In our classroom, Room 211, the classroom library is always ‘under construction.’ I try my best to continually purchase books that will appeal to a wide variety of interests and the wide range of reading skills that a Grade 7 and 8 classroom can comprise. The library shelves include nonfiction books on a range of topics (war, science, history, culture, fashion, beauty, geography, etc.), historical fiction, mystery, fantasy, realistic/contemporary fiction, sports books, books in a series, adventure and action books, romance, and science fiction.

If a student has not yet found his/her favourite types of books or books that he/she can read without a huge struggle (barriers a and b), it could be due to a variety of reasons.  I do my best to:

  • Assess the general reading level of the student through formal testing or in student-teacher reading conferences, so that I can offer up books that he/she can access independently
  • Find books that the student will enjoy

 

FINDING THE RIGHT BOOKS IS NOT ALWAYS EASY

One thing I’ve learned over the course of almost 20 years in the classroom is that students who haven’t really read much on their own before, automatically assume that they will enjoy books that relate to their interests in other areas.  For example, many a young man has entered my classroom thinking that the only books for him are sports books.  The hockey players, the football stars, the soccer enthusiasts are drawn to the novels about hockey players, football stars, and soccer enthusiasts.  And yet, while these books may be interesting to them on some level, they are not necessarily the best fit for these readers.  Often, these young readers will find that while they LOVE to DO sports, they’d rather read something . . . funny, or mysterious, or something full of action and adventure.  Finding an interesting genre of book, an author’s ‘voice’ that is both intriguing and comfortable, a book that the student can read without looking up every word in the dictionary is my main goal for students whose lack of passion for reading are caused by barriers A and B.

 

BARRIER C

But what about the students who can read all the words with no difficulty?  Some students read aloud beautifully, have excellent decoding skills, can march through the thickest of reading jungles, reading all of the most challenging words by using their knowledge of phonics (sound and letter relationships), word parts (suffixes, prefixes, roots), semantics (word meanings), syntactics (word placement in a sentence).  These students may still not enjoy reading because they’re skimming the surface.

 

WHAT? A FOOTBALL ANALOGY?

They read books like I watch football.  I see people running across the field, throwing the ball, catching, blocking, tackling, and piling on top of one another, and yet none of it makes much sense to me, so I lose interest pretty quickly.  I see it all, but I don’t get much out of it.  I need to know more about the game.  I need someone to sit with me and explain why certain plays are happening, what each one means, and how they all fit together.

Strategic reading – like understanding the rules, goals, and nuances of football – can help readers delve deeper into the meaning behind the words, the symbols, the underlying meaning of the book.  And guess what?  THAT is where the joy in reading lies!  It’s in the deeper meanings of a text, in what the author is trying to say about people, or about life, or about an issue or topic that matters to them.

Learning how to read strategically opens the doors to understanding text at a deeper level which can help students to find the experience of reading more joyful, more meaningful.  No one wants to spend hours or even minutes doing things that have no meaning to them, so strategic reading is critical to helping students figure out what they love to read and why!

That’s why I’ve been teaching students in my classes to read strategically.  In the next few posts on this blog, I’ll explain the various strategies we’ve been working on in class, the reasons for using them, and the kinds of text they work best with, and how they’ve helped students to make reading a more meaningful experience.

 

Skip to toolbar