Before, During, & After Reading Strategies

By: Kasey McKaneRED4348

What is a Reading Strategy?

Reading strategies are purposeful, cognitive actions that students take when they are reading to help them construct and maintain meaning.

Reading successfully goes well beyond fluency and word recognition and relies heavily upon comprehension of text.

Table of Contents

Before:BrainstormingVocabulary PreviewKWLFrayer ModelFirst Lines

During:Partner ReadingPost-ItsReaders TheatreParagraph ShrinkingDear Diary

After:Exit SlipsSummaryRetellingStory MapsSurf the Net

Before Reading

BrainstormingVocabulary PreviewKWL ChartFrayer ModelFirst Lines

Brainstorming

Examine the title of the selection you are about to read

List all the information that comes to mind about this title

Use these pieces of information to recall and understand the material

Use this knowledge to reframe or reorder what you know, or to note what you disagree with, for further research

Vocabulary Preview

Unfamiliar key words need to be taught to students before reading so that new words, background information, and comprehension can improve together.

List all words in the assignment that may be important for students to understand. Arrange words to show the relationships to the learning task. Add words students probably already understand to connect relationships between what is known and the unknown. Share information with students. Verbally quiz them on the information before assigned reading begins.

KWL Charts What do I Know? What do I

Want to learn? What did I Learn?

A good strategy for group discussions.

Develop a three column poster with each question in a column and list out responses.

The students can fill the first two columns in prior to reading.

This is a great activity to do as a class, groups, or individually.

Frayer Model

The Frayer Model is a strategy that uses a graphic organizer for vocabulary building. This technique requires students to define the target vocabulary words or concepts, and apply this information by generating examples and non-examples. This information is placed on a chart that is divided into four sections to provide a visual representation for students.

First Lines

First Lines is a strategy in which students read the beginning sentences from assigned readings and make predictions about the content of what they're about to read.

This pre-reading technique helps students focus their attention on what they can tell from the first lines of a story, play, poem, or other text.

During Reading

Partner ReadingPost-ItsReader’s TheatreParagraph ShrinkingDear Diary

Partner Reading

Partner Reading is a cooperative learning strategy in which two students work together to read an assigned text. Partner Reading does not require special reading materials and consequently enables teachers to use the reading material of their choice.

Create pairs within the classroom by identifying which children require help on specific skills and who the most appropriate children are to help other children learn those skills.

Post - Its

If they are using a school book in which they cannot make notes or marks, encourage them to keep a pack of Post-Its with them and make notes on these.

Great for remember unfamiliar words that need to be looked up, important details, or questions the students have regarding the story.

In my own experience, we have used different colors for different thing: › Blue=Unfamiliar words› Yellow=Key Information› Pink=Questions to ask

Reader’s Theatre

Reader's Theater is a strategy for developing reading fluency. It involves children in oral reading through reading parts in scripts. In using this strategy, students do not need to memorize their part; they need only to reread it several times, thus developing their fluency skills. The best Reader's Theater scripts include lots of dialogue.› Promotes:

Fluency Reading aloud with expression Building of reading confidence

Paragraph Shrinking

Allows each student to take turns reading, pausing, and summarizing the main points of each paragraph. Students provide each other with feedback as a way to monitor comprehension.

encourages students to work in pairs, taking turns in reading, summarizing key points in a paragraph and providing feedback to enhance overall reading comprehension.

Dear Diary

Keep a diary as if you were a character in the story. Write down events that happen during the story and reflect on how they affected the character and why.

This keeps them connected on a personal level while reading the story which also encourages them to become more interested in what you’re reading.

After Reading

Exit SlipsSummaryRetellingStory MapsSurf the Net

Exit Slips

These help students reflect on what they have learned and express what or how they are thinking about the new information. Exit Slips easily incorporate writing into the content area classroom and require students to think critically.

Help Students:› Process new concepts› Reflect on information learned› Express their thoughts about new information

Summary

Summarizing is how we take larger selections of text and reduce them to their bare essentials: the gist, the key ideas, the main points that are worth noting and remembering. Webster's calls a summary the "general idea in brief form"; it's the distillation, condensation, or reduction of a larger work into its primary notions.

We strip away the extra verbiage and extraneous examples. We focus on the heart of the matter. We try to find the key words and phrases that, when uttered later, still manage to capture the gist of what we've read. We are trying to capture the main ideas and the crucial details necessary for supporting them.

Retelling

Retelling involves having students orally reconstruct a story that they have read.

As part of retelling, students engage in ordering and summarizing information and in making inferences.

Very similar to summarizing but in some cases is more specific.

Story Maps

visual representations of the elements that make up a narrative. The purpose of a story map is to help students focus on the important elements of narratives-theme, characters, settings, problems, plot events, and resolution-and on the relationship among those elements.

Surf the Net

After reading a book check out the Web and its offerings about the book, its author, or its subject.

This can engage the students in a fun way to get more involved and want to learn more.