Practical Literacy Tools: The Eight Reading Habits

1. The Eight Reading Habits: The Practical Application of Literacy Tools By Jennifer Chang, L. Isabella Robertson, Heather Bennett

2. The Eight Habits of Great Readers • Predict • Visualize • Summarize • Make Connections (text to text, self, world) • Question • Make Inferences • Use Prior Knowledge • Use Text Structure

3. Predict Break up suspenseful short stories into sections. Students make predictions after each cliff-hanging section Example: Lamb to the Slaughter

4. Visualize • Instead of asking students to draw pictures after reading text, show them a picture and ask them to write a story Example: The Great Migration

5. Summarize • Read aloud a text that only the teacher has. Stop after each page and have students summarize what they just heard. • Example: works with any text

6. Make Connections • Choose a realistic novel or contemporary non-fiction piece and have students brainstorm connections. • Example: Monster

7. Question • Choose a text that is slightly above your students reading level and have them stick post-it notes next to passages that they do not understand. • Example: Never Cry Wolf

8. Make Inferences • This can be combined with a lesson on characterization. Have students make a list of judgments about a character, accompanied by the clues in the text. • Example: A Family Apart

9. Use Prior Knowledge • Choose a historical piece that relates to the time period they are studying in Social Studies. Have students apply that knowledge to their understanding of the novel. • Example: Red Scarf Girl / China’s Cultural Revolution

10. Use Text Structure • Choose a novel that uses multiple genres and have students identify and copy the genres in their own writing. • Example: Tears of A Tiger