1. Reading Comprehension Strategies Cassie Griggs, Cindy Kohler and Jennifer Weiss 2008/09

2. Students and Accessing Information in Textbooks: Students are assigned books that are inaccessible to them because: -They have no comprehension strategies -They don’t have any background knowledge -They don’t recognize organizational patterns -They lack purpose

3. Suggestions: 1.) Become a passionate reader of what you teach 2.) Model how good readers think

4. Student Complaints: -I don’t care about the topic -I can’t relate to the topic -I daydream and my mind wanders -I can’t stay focused I just say the words so I can be done I get bored

5. Establish Purpose: -Hand out questions that ask for specific answers before reading -Model your own enthusiasm for the text -Use background knowledge to connect to the reading -Marking text (sticky notes/highlighters) -Double Entry Diaries (DED) -Comprehension Constructors

6. Tracking Confusion to It’s Source “Have students abdicated their responsibility for understanding what they read?” -Cris Tovani

7. Questions to ask your students: -How do you know when your confused? -What do you do when you are confused?

8. Six Signals That Indicate Confusion: -The voice in their head isn’t interacting with the text -The camera in their head shuts off(no visual images) -The reader’s mind begins to wander -The reader can’t remember what has been read -Clarifying questions asked by the reader cannot be answered -The reader reencounters a character and has no recollection of when they were introduced

9. Fix It! Strategies to fix confusion: -Make a connection to the text and your life, your knowledge of the world, another text -Make a prediction -Stop and think about what you have read -Ask yourself a question and answer it -Reflect in writing on what you have read -Use print conventions -Retell what you have read -Reread -Notice patterns -Adjust reading rate

10. ReQuest Improves reading by having the readers formulate questions about the text they are reading.

11. Procedure for implementing ReQuest: -Students develop questions based on their reading -Students write down questions as they devise them -Teacher picks a student volunteer to read one of her/his question aloud -Teacher asks for volunteer to answer -Student who answers correctly asks the next question

12. Post Reading -Timeline -Letter to character -Labeled drawing -Distilled page showing theme -Venn Diagram

13. Note: Not all strategies will work for everyone, but, if a reader becomes confused or disengages from reading, there are methods to help them help themselves. These strategies need to be modeled and practiced in order to be effective.