Strategic Reading

1. Strategic Reading What good readers do

2. Reading is thinking!

3. Reading is strategic!

4. Reading is active!

5. Everyone can become a better reader by using the strategies!

6. What is a strategy? A strategy is a carefully devised plan of action to achieve a goal.

7. Strategy #1 Good readers use fix-up methods when meaning is challenged.

8. Fix-up Methods Good readers pay attention to their ability to understand what they’re reading. At times, even the best readers may be unsure of what they’ve read. No matter what problem happens, whenever good readers don’t understand what they’ve read, they take action and do something to help fix this problem. They don’t keep reading!

9. Fix-Up Methods • Reread the passage. 2. Go back to other parts of the text. 3. Read on for no more than two sentences.

10. Read-Along Guide

11. Strategy #2 Good readers find word meaning and build vocabulary using context clues.

12. Word meaning Finding word meaning is a critical skill that will help you better understand what you’re reading. Being able to figure out new or unfamiliar words is kind of like good detective work. Often there are clues within the passage, and it’s simply a matter of decoding them.

13. Methods for figuring out word meaning • Sound out the word. • “Chunk” the word– Break up the word. Is there a root word, a prefix, or a suffix? • Link the word to a known word.—Do you know other words that look or sound like this word? • Look for smaller words that you recognize—Is the word made up a smaller word you know? • Use context clues—Use clues from the sentence or surrounding sentences. • Think about what makes sense—Ask yourself, “What would make sense in the sentence?” • Other sources—Ask a teacher, use a dictionary, use a glossary, etc.

14. Read-Along Guide

15. Strategy #3 Good readers use visual text clues to figure out meaning.

16. Visual Text Clues • Good readers pay attention to any features of the page or the text. For example, good readers pay attention to when a character is speaking because of the quotation marks and the indented space. Also, good readers look at punctuation and read expressively using the punctuation clues.

17. Text clues Text Clue (Fiction) • Punctuation (.,;: “”…!?-) • Boldface text/italics/capitals • Spacing features or unusual spacing • Titles or subtitles • other Text Clue/Feature (Nonfiction) • Boldface text/italics/capitals • Titles/subtitles • Photographs/illustrations • Maps • Captions • Sidebars • Table of contents/glossary/index • other

18. Read-Along Guide

19. Read-Along Guide

20. Strategy #4 Good readers ask questions to engage in the text.

21. Asking Questions Good readers ask silent questions before, during, and after reading. They question the content, the author, the events, the issues, and the ideas in the text. Sometimes your questions will be answered immediately. Sometimes they are answered by the end of the text. Still, other times you may need to research a little bit more to find an answer or you may need to thing of them as open questions and hold onto them for the future. No matter when your questions is answered, using this strategy makes you a better reader.

22. Key question words • Who? • What? • Where? • When? • Why? • How? • If…?

23. Read-Along Guide

24. Strategy #5 Good readers make connections to aid understanding.

25. Making Connections Good readers use prior knowledge and experiences to better understand what they’re reading. Sometimes it is helpful to think about what you “know” or try to “connect with” a character, event, or some part of the book you are reading.

26. Types of Connections • Text-to-Self Connection (T-S) • Text-to-Text Connection (T-T) • Text-To-World Connection (T-W) (These types of connections may overlap, but it’s fun to think about how you know or “connect with” something.)

27. Text-to-Self Connection These connections include experiences you share from your background. For example, you might be a very good soccer or football player and share experiences with a character who plays the same sport. Also, you might share a feeling with a character, such as being frightened or excited.

28. Text-to-Text Connection These include experiences you read about in other writings. For example, you may be familiar with fairy tale characters from reading books about them. Likewise, you may enjoy reading books that are in a series when you need to know what happened in earlier volumes. Also, you might have a favorite author who may write about similar things.

29. Text-to World Connections These include experiences you know and share with others simply because of your common worldly experiences. These might be things you seem to know to do without being told, just like your automatic reflexes, such as blinking. Or it might be things that everyone just seems to know, like that the President’s job is pretty important.

30. Read-Along Guide

31. Strategy #6 Good readers visualize to support the text.

32. Visualizing Good readers visualize to help them fully understand the words, actions, characters, setting, and other elements of the text they are reading. It’s like having a movie playing in your head. Sometimes you can create a movie from some descriptive words the author has written. Other times, simply sharing an experience makes it easy to create a picture in your mind.

33. Read-Along Guide

34. Strategy # 7 Good readers make predictions.

35. pre- = before dict = to say predict = to say before

36. Making Predictions Readers are always guessing about what’s going to happen next in their story. Guessing(or making predictions)about what’s going to happen and then discovering whether the prediction is right or wrong is something good readers do without thinking about it. It’s like a game they play while they’re reading.

37. Reader’s predictions are based on other events that might have happened in the story. They could also come from what readers know about a character. A reader’s own experience might also help them make predictions. Making predictions and testing them helps us understand a story.

38. Read-Along Guide

39. Strategy #8 Good readers synthesize to gain new meaning.

40. Synthesizing Synthesizing means that you actively collect and organize information you’ve learned from your reading. It’s like filing information into folders you’ve stored in your mind. As you do this, you begin to discover ideas and even reshape your understanding to create new ideas.

41. As you read this process of synthesizing occurs continuously---you expand and reshape your ever-growing body of knowledge. It’s like your knowledge is “morphing” into something new and exciting.

42. Read-Along Guide

43. Read-Along Guide Synthesizing for nonfiction: Using sticky notes, identify 3-5 new, significant facts that you’ve learned from your reading. Think about how these facts added to your understanding. On page ____the significant fact I found was _______________________________________________. I already knew that __________________________________. What I didn’t know was _______________________________. This new fact is important because ______________________.

44. Strategy #9 Good readers find the important or main idea in their reading.

45. Finding the Important or Main Idea Remember that the main idea is a pretty big idea that tells what a paragraph or an entire reading passage is mainly about. The main idea is not a small detail, although all of the small details together make up the main idea.

46. Sometimes a main idea is stated, like in a topic sentence, a closing sentence, or somewhere else in the passage. Other times, the main idea is not directly stated, but implied.

47. Read-Along Guide Summarize or locate the main idea for your reading passage and then find three examples from the passage that support the main idea. The main idea in pages _____ to _______ is ________________ ___________________________________________________.

48. Strategy # 10 Good readers identify facts and details.

49. Identifying facts and details Writers use facts and details for many reasons. Facts and details support a main idea and, and in so doing, provide more information about the main idea. Facts and details may: • Describe a person, place or thing • Explain how to do something • Tell the order in which things happen • Share an experience, idea, or opinion

50. An easy way to find facts and details is to look for sentences that tell about the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the main idea.