Strategic Reading In My Classroom - A Rationale and Sequence

Once the first six weeks of school are over, the real fun begins. At least in my opinion. Once the classroom expectations are set. Once the reading community is established. Once students begin to falter in their reading because they’ve reread their favorite books and are no longer interested in making it look like they are readers (I know that sounds horribly pessimistic, but if “were going to have honest conversations…”), it’s time for the real magic to happen.

I love it when students lose interest in reading. Be it they do know not what to read next, or books start getting boring, whatever the situation, this is the time to maximize strategic reading instruction. In my classroom, strategic reading instruction is intended to scaffold student’s reading interests. It also helps students find out what could be interesting in a book rather than leaving them to “what they’re interested in” – which has run out as evidenced by their “can’t find anything to read.”

From the sixth week of school until Thanksgiving, (when things go well), I take my students through a journey of learning to use strategic reading. My hope for them, or a goal I set for them, is to not only during the lessons but also into their authentic reading experiences.

Sadly, because students don’t often have experience with strategic reading. It also takes time for readers to experience how strategic reading benefits them. I think this makes sense. Taught and practiced over the course of a few lessons reveals to students what they are capable of as opposed to how strategic reading can make a difference in their day-to-day reading experiences. It takes time and some enthusiasm to inspire students to use several strategies to maximize their reading experiences.

I’ve learned, over the years, that strategy instruction cannot be arbitrary, haphazard, or procedural. By arbitrary, I mean it cannot be certain strategies that might be fun or easy. Haphazard is a bit brash, but where worksheets allow for the identification of a strategy rather than application, yet considering them as the same learning outcome, sets students up for failure. Procedural is doing it because the lesson said so or how it was presented.  Not long ago, I worked in a content-literacy-based program focused on visualizing as a strategy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great strategy, but if students don’t see a picture in their head, there’s a distinct psychological phenomenon they can’t or don’t have the background knowledge to do so, which can become frustrating.  The strategy was taught and reinforced exclusively within the unit. No other strategies seemed to ignore the fact that multiple-strategy instruction is quite favorable. It wasn’t long before students became quite bored with the visualizing strategy.

I’ve also learned there has to be an element of quality when applying strategies effectively. Students will manipulate the intent of instruction or perform a task to be completed rather than internalize for transfer.  For instance, when I teach students the questioning strategy, many say they’ve used the questioning strategy by asking “I wonder what the book is about” before reading. Sure, the student used the appropriate sentence stem but didn’t bring in any background knowledge or analysis from book selection strategies to make the strategy impactful.

Not that I am perfect, but I do attempt to follow a continuum of strategies, with the intent of students building their knowledge of one, supporting the others, reducing the cognitive load of other strategies by making previous ones more automatic, and learning how each strategy can be interconnected.

Here are the five I focus most on. 

Clarifying:  Clarifying is the most essential strategy students know. Without knowing how to clarify or using various sub-strategies to clarify effectively, students cannot “plow” a path for further strategy application.

Questioning: For my fifth-graders, questioning is about using the content of the text to drive interest in later chapters. Questioning should be students' wonder, not about the words or language, we’ll leave that to clarifying, but how an author writes, and how a character might act or interact within a setting. To question motives; to simply be curious about reading rather than fulfilling an obligation.

Summarizing: Three bullet points. What are the three big things about the chapter or section? Or, what would you want to tell another person? Generally, I ask students to summarize the end of a chapter, for example, by naming the three important events of that chapter. Or the three important things the character did.  The idea is to consolidate reading before moving forward.  It’s from this evidence that predictions can be fostered.

Predicting: Somewhat related to questioning, predicting is also intended to drive a reader’s interest in a text. A primary difference is the language application using sentence stems. “I wonder” is a question. “Will” or “I think” are predictive. Hence the “I wonder, I think…” strategy that opens many content lessons. Predicting is distinct from questioning because of timing. I teach students to question as an engagement with the text while predicting invites readers to search for an outcome. (That needs to be unpacked more!)

Connecting: I’ve often found that connecting to text is easier than the other strategies, hence I save it for last.  There’s a somewhat intuitive nature to reading and connecting to background knowledge, that is if the reader understands what’s happening in the text.  Connecting is a pathway to how we see ourselves in text, identify with characters, and experience emotions with characters. Connection is the root of the ethereal reading experience. Instruction is to remind students of the value of connecting to text. Moreover, the lessons are intended to build the capacity to explain thoughts and feelings by linking background knowledge with text evidence that makes the reading a part of the reader’s life and draws parallels between texts fostering deeper comprehension.

I call these the Reciprocal Teaching family. Alas, these strategies are deliberately taught to students, reinforced through small groups or reading conferences, and praised when applied during independent reading.  Each strategy contains five distinct mini lessons to explore the breadth and depth of each strategy, so students understand their function and internalize their useful with repeated applications.  Each strategy is taught using a short passage, that is part of a larger text or connected between texts so that the lessons are not insolation or limited to a text, but as part of a broader context. Thus, the instruction creates interest within authentic texts so students can deepen their inter