More strategies to use during reading strategies

Annolighting Text

Annolighting is a technique which helps students discover the main ideas and key concepts in a text by highlighting the most essential words and writing marginal notes to aid in comprehension, analysis, and interpretation. The result is a distillation of the essential elements and message of the text.

Choral Reading

Choral Reading helps students develop fluency, comprehension, and sight vocabulary. This is an important step to understanding the human emotion and subtle meanings in text. 

Student pairs or groups read parts of a passage in unison alternating fast and slow lines, loud and soft lines, high and low voices, and emphasising key words or phrases. 

This works especially well with poetry and other rhythmic passages. Choral Readings are repeated, as if preparing for a performance, until mastery.

Cloze Reading

A Cloze Reading activity can be used to help students construct meaning from a text and evaluate their comprehension of the text content. Delete words using a word count formula such as every fifth word (or other criteria) from a portion of the text and replace the deleted words with blanks. Students fill in the blanks with the word they think fits the meaning of the sentence. This strategy can be used with or without a word bank.

Column Notes

Column notes help students organize information about important content into relevant categories. Traditionally, the left column lists the items under investigation such as U.S. Presidents. Columns to the right provide space for students to record details about various curricular topics such as “challenges” and “accomplishments.”

Content Inventory

A content inventory is a form of analysing the the content in a text. For example, a teacher may highlight all of the verbs used in a text and organise the verbs by verb tenses so that s/he knows what verb tenses students may need to review prior to reading the text. 

The Content inventory may ask students what information they know about the features of non-fiction texts such as the Table of Contents, index and captions under pictures. The content inventory presents a summary of a particular feature of a text.

Graphic Organisers

Graphic organisers derive their name from the fact that students organise thoughts and information in a graphic format such as charts, webs, chains, maps, and sketches. They can be used for a variety of purposes including helping students compare and contrast; categorise, classify, sequence, evaluate, rank, analyse story elements, and collect evidence to support an opinion.

Opinion – Proof Chart

This two-column chart allows students to personally engage with the text while challenging them to develop persuasive reasoning skills. Students are asked to record an opinion in the left column and, in the right column, to record evidence from the reading that supports their opinion.

Three Minute Pause Summarisation

The 3-Minute Pause helps students process information by providing a short break during which they summarise new content, connect new content to prior knowledge, and are free to ask clarifying questions. 

SCIM-C

SCIM-C was designed to help students develop the skills of historical inquiry, critical thinking, and intellectual flexibility. (Hicks, Doolittle, Ewing, 2004) Using a fluid “frames” approach, students read the source then perform the SCIM-C task.