“Your students are not engaged with the texts they are reading.” I will never forget when my administration said that to me after an observation my first year teaching. I remember thinking “They were reading the text. That is enough, right?” However, it wasn’t and my students’ comprehension suffered because they were not actively engaged with the texts they were reading.
Since then, I have learned to explicitly teach my students reading strategies to help engage they are reading. You can read more about the first reading strategies I teach at the beginning of the year here. This post will share three more reading strategies that are a bit more advanced, including free printables so you can try this out with your students.
Introducing the Reading Strategies
To introduce these reading strategies, I teach my students a new strategy a week (sometimes every other week) that they must implement while they are reading independently. I introduce and model the strategy through our weekly read aloud. We also practice this strategy in guided reading, especially for my groups who struggle more than others.
Reading Strategy: Cause and Effect
This reading strategy requires the students to begin with a T-Chart labeled Cause and Effect. As the students are reading, they record events that happen on the Effect column. Then, they find, determine, or even infer the cause for that event and write it in the Cause column.
Reading Strategy: Summarizing with Who- Did What
As the students are reading fiction texts, they stop at the end of each page or chapter to briefly summarize what they read. To do this, they jot down the following:
- Who – who was or were the most important character(s) in this section
- Did What – what was the most important action done by the main character or what happened to the main character.
The students can organize their thoughts in a two-column chart or simply write it out in a complete sentence.
Reading Strategy: Fact-Question-Response
This reading strategy works with nonfiction text and is adapted from Comprehension Toolkit by Stephanie Harvey. As the students are reading, they record facts they learned from the text, questions they still have related to that fact, and their responses to the text.
This strategy is a bit difficult for some students as they may not pull out important or interesting details, as you can see from this example.
The Results of Using the Strategies
Using these strategies greatly improved my students’ comprehension and recall of the texts they were reading. Putting their thoughts down on paper really focused my students and engaged them in the text they were reading.
No more kids daydreaming while reading or only flipping the pages. They are reading, thinking, and writing! And the best part is that their comprehension has greatly improved since teaching these direct strategies to comprehend while reading.
This week I had an AHA moment when it came to my strategies. I have taught them so many strategies and this week we took a week off from a new strategy and I told the students to use the strategy from last week. One of my kids said, “This book really works for cause and effect, can I do that strategy?” Oh my goodness! YES YES YES, you can!
Download FREE Printables Here
More Blog Posts and Resources to Support Your Readers
Click on the links below to read more blog posts or see recommended resources to support your readers (especially struggling readers) further.
Decoding Strategies for 4th and 5th Graders
Helping Struggling Readers in Upper Elementary
Sentence Stems for Reading Strategies: FREE Posters
Free Reading Strategies Take-Home Book
Getting Students Excited to Read
Holding Students Accountable for Independent Reading
Reading Intervention for 4th and 5th Grade Students Reading at 2nd/3rd Grade Levels: Fiction Skills
I love this idea. Congrats on a successful week and exciting news. I teach 3rd grade in NYC and just found out that I will have 2 new kids next week. That brings us to 30!!!! I would LOVE if they opened a new class.
Thanks for the great ideas.
Kristin
Drowning in Paperclips
Thanks for posting. How exciting that you get another teacher. We have 28 per classroom, and that isn't changing any time soon. Though we did get a new teacher mid year about 5 years ago. It will be a challenge for them! But what a good team mate to have!
Do you use readers workshop or just guided reading?
My district has recently pretty much let guided reading go, so we can fully utilize conferring.
EmilyK
Emily,
We do both, and Daily Three mixed in there as well. I start my Reader's Workshop with a 15-20 minute mini lesson, then we do three rotations of Guided Reading where the students are during Write about Reading, Read to Self, and sometimes Word Work.
So do you use a basal or textbook from to teach reading?
Jennifer
I love this idea too! Thanks for sharing. I think it would be a great idea when I formally start teaching in school. I love the idea of teaching English through Literature.
Thanks a lot.
Blessings!
Hi Derly, I love teaching strategies and skills through the students independent reading books!
Good luck on getting your first teaching job!
Jennifer
I just came across this and love it!! I would love to hear more of the reading strategies that you teach!
I would also love to hear about which strategies you teach!
The link for sentence stem posters for the Common Core Reading Standards is taking you to a division resource.
Hi Susan, I checked all the links and they worked for me. The only thing I can think that might be happening is you are not scrolling down enough and only seeing the free division resource in my store. Or there may have been a glitch that is now fixed or a link I am somehow missing that you are clicking on. Either way, here are the correct links:
Free reading sentence stems: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sentence-Stems-for-Comprehension-Strategies-and-Skills-298114
Common core reading sentence stems: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Jennifer-Findley/Search:reading+sentence+stems+posters
Hope this helps!