“Whatever they are reading, students must also show a steadily growing ability to discern more from and make fuller use of text, including making an increasing number of connections among ideas and between texts, considering a wider range of textual evidence, and becoming more sensitive to inconsistencies, ambiguities, and poor reasoning in texts.” – New York State P-12 Common Core Learning Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects | Introduction (6)
What are Instructional Reading Strategies?
Instructional reading strategies are tools used before, during, and after reading that help students understand or comprehend the text. Many students understand the literal or surface meaning of text, however, students struggle with identifying complexities and making connections to abstract concepts and large themes from their reading. Instructional reading strategies will help students gain the comprehension skills needed to independently read complex texts. There are two keys to using instructional reading strategies in the classroom; explicit teaching of the strategy and expectation of students using reading strategies independently.
Why are Instructional Reading Strategies important?
Instructional reading strategies enable students from grades P through 12 to interpret, understand, and analyze increasingly complex texts required by the Common Core Learning Standards. By using reading strategies students will become independent readers, build strong content knowledge, learn to identify evidence, and develop confidence in knowing how to tackle complex or confusing texts. The guide in this blog is called a tool box because students should become familiar with the purposes of different instructional reading strategies. Students should be encouraged to select strategies that meet their learning needs.
What do instructional reading strategies look like in the classroom?
Begin using the strategies in the tool box through this four step scaffolded method. Because learners are diverse in their strengths, interests, and needs it is important to teach students a variety of instructional reading strategies and require students to reflect on the usefulness of the strategy. Students should be able to independently select and use strategies to help them comprehend texts.
Teaching Instructional Reading Strategies (scaffolded method)
- Teacher models strategy
- Teacher provides guided practice for students
- Students independently use the strategy
- Students reflect on the usefulness of the strategy
Using this Instructional Reading Strategies Toolkit
- Follow process reading and exploring the tool box
- Discuss this tool box with colleagues using the conversation structure
What do supports and extensions look like for diverse learners?
Instructional reading strategies are often mis-interpreted as differentiated instruction. For example, the pre-reading strategy Questions Only, where students brainstorm only questions (no answers) about a text they are going to read, is not differentiated because the activity is open ended or because students can offer simple or complex questions. The Questions Only activity is engaging and open-ended, but not differentiated to meet a specific learning need. However, Questions Only, just like all of the reading strategies in the tool box, can easily be differentiated. For example, English Language Learners might be assigning questions stems such as who, where, what, how, and why to support developing questions. Identifying parts of the text or specific words to formulate questions about is another support that can be assigned to students who need help developing vocabulary or using text structures. Extensions for learners who need more challenge might be assign students to develop questions that can only be answered using evidence from the text or to develop questions that compare this text to other previously read texts. The reading strategies can easily be differentiated to meet specific learning needs by adding supports and/or extensions to the directions described in the tool box. In addition, although all students may be reading the same text, students can use different reading strategies based on their learning needs.
More Resources
Beers, K. (2003). When Kids Can’t Read What Teachers Can Do. Portsmouth, NH: Heineman.
Gallagher, K. (2004). Deeper Reading: Comprehending Challenging Texts, 4-12. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
Gregory, G. and Kuzmich, L. (2004). Differentiated Literacy Strategies for Student Growth and Achievement in Grades K-6. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Gregory, G. and Kuzmich, L. (2005). Differentiated Literacy Strategies for Student Growth and Achievement in Grades 7-12. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Improving K-3 Reading Comprehension. Doing What Works. Retrieved on December 9, 2011: http://dww.ed.gov/Reading-Comprehension/Teach-Comprehension-Strategies/practice/?T_ID=36&P_ID=97
All Differentiated Instruction articles, Reading Rockets. Retrieved on December 9, 2011: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/c64/