Reading for Meaning

Description

Reading for Meaning is a way for students to be strategic about the way they approach important texts. Rather than picking up a text and hoping they land on the right information and remember the right things, Reading for Meaning provides supports that direct student thinking before, during, and after reading.

Why it works...

1. Students are provided with a framework for strategic reading.
   1. Pre-reading - Students look at pre-made statements about the reading to gain an understanding of the basic structure and content of the material to be read. Students also examine each statement in the context of their agreement or disagreement with them. This activates prior knowledge.
   2. Active reading - Students are now tasked with supporting their predictions with evidence. Doing so gives their reading purpose.
   3. Post-reading - Students reflect on the accuracy of their initial responses to the pre-reading statements. This can be done individually or collaboratively.
2. Students are supported in overcoming common reading difficulties.
   1. If the right statements are created at the beginning, student reading can be incredibly intentional in that it can be guided to address specific types of learning outcomes. Example statements…
      1. Vocabulary
      2. Forming Main Ideas
      3. Building Inference
      4. Making a case
      5. Creating mental images
      6. Making connections between the text and other content areas
      7. Exploring metaphors and symbols
      8. Appreciating style and technique
      9. Empathizing
      10. Developing a personal perspective

How to plan it...

1. Identify a text that would benefit from deep analysis.
2. Identify major themes and elements within the text that you’d like your students to find.
3. Create a handful of statements to provide to students before they see the text that will hook them into the process of reading it.
4. Have students read each statement and record whether they agree or disagree with it. You may also decide to have students use the statements to predict some of the content in the passage. Students should record their thoughts on the statements in a visual organizer.
5. Provide students with the text and have them find evidence that supports or refutes their responses to the statements.
6. Have students share their thoughts with other students before a whole-class discussion about their findings. These meetings should involve sharing their thoughts and evidence supporting or refuting their positions.
7. Bring all students into a whole-class discussion about their findings.

Tech Integration...

• Pre-reading: Provide students with a Google Form with each of the pre-reading statements. Doing so will give them an opportunity to share their agreement or disagreement with each statement in a way that is recorded for the teacher. There’s also the potential for the teacher to turn that data back around to their students and share their collective initial thoughts about the reading before they begin.
• Provide each student with a Google Doc, via Classroom, that has space for each of their responses to the initial statements in the pre-reading. The document can also be structured in a way that supports students in citing evidence in a specific way.
• Post-reading: Create a Flipgrid board for students to visually reflect on their responses to the pre-reading statements. Doing so will give them an opportunity to share their thinking and also use other students’ reflections as an additional resource to refine their own conclusions.