Teaching Reading Strategies

Best Practices for Teaching Strategic Reading

The International Reading Association’s Commission on Adolescent Literacy stated succinctly, “Continual instruction beyond the early grades is needed” (Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw, & Rycik, 1999, p. 3). Getting readers off to a good start certainly is crucial in the early grades, but ongoing instruction in the later grades is necessary for maintaining and, in many cases, accelerating readers’ growth.  omprehension strategies are vital components of adolescent literacy instruction. The comprehension strategy instruction in Edge was designed with the following principles and practices in mind.

1. Direct, Explicit Instruction

Effective comprehension strategy instruction for adolescents includes direct, explicit teaching (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004). Such instruction calls for teachers to scaffold students’ learning by guiding them to a particular strategy then openly and plainly describing it. Teachers model, or demonstrate, the strategy—frequently thinking through the process aloud—to show it in action.

On every Before Reading page in Edge, the “how to” of each reading strategy is explicitly modeled,

using the actual text to be read. Strategy questions during and after reading provide additional scaffolds, allowing teachers to gradually release responsibility for the use of the strategy to students, so that they can make it their own.

2. Show, Don’t Tell

An important part of direct, explicit instruction calls for teachers to demonstrate and explain why particular strategies are useful as well as how and when to use them (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004).

In Edge, every strategy has explicit step-by-step explanations of how to perform the strategy. The explanations are tailored to fit youths’ funds of general knowledge and facility with everyday

strategic thinking. In every instance the explanatory steps contain model responses so youth actually see an example of what is being emphasized; no step is merely mentioned.

3. Connect Reading to Students’ Lives and Their Out-of-School Literacies

We know that youth come to school with substantial funds of everyday knowledge acquired from their families, communities, peers, and popular culture (Moje, et al., 2004). In effective secondary schools, teachers regularly form webs of connections between this knowledge and the lesson being taught (Langer, 2002). Teachers overtly point out these connections and invite students to make their own. Every strategy introduction in Edge (“How to Read Short Stories”, for example) begins with an

inductive learning experience, in which students are able to connect the skills and processes involved in the reading strategy to something they already know how to do in their everyday lives. “Connect Reading to Your Life” shows students who may have negative opinions about their abilities as readers that they really do have valuable cognitive abilities that they can bring to bear on texts.

4. Focused Instruction

Focusing comprehension strategy instruction—one strategy at a time—guards against overwhelming

students (Nokes & Dole, 2004). A noteworthy feature of Edge is its focus on a single reading strategy in each unit. Throughout each unit students have multiple, varied opportunities to develop expertise with a particular strategy.

5. Promote Transfer Across Genres

A time-honored finding among researchers is that the characteristics of various genres present readers

varying challenges (Jetton & Alexander, 2004; Moore, Readence, & Rickelman, 1983; RAND Reading Study Group, 2002). Strategies for reading fiction in an English/language arts class do not

travel well to reading algebra in a mathematics class. In Edge students meet recurring commentaries

on one particular strategy along with multiple opportunities to perform it with different genres and

passages. Every main reading selection in Edge is paired with a secondary, or adjunct, selection with

which the targeted reading strategy is also taught. This pairing helps students understand, for example,

that the way that they relate main ideas and details in expository nonfiction is both similar and different than the way that they do it with poetry. Explicitly teaching how the same reading strategy works across genres helps students truly own the strategy and apply it independently to whatever reading they do in the future.

6. Encourage Cognitive Collaboration

Bringing students together to work through comprehension tasks is another effective practice

(Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003; Greenleaf, Schoenbach, Cziko, & Mueller, 2001).

Youth team with others, mixing perspectives and insights to solve problems. They converse in the

form of a dialogue, with speakers responding to what one another said. Thinking is aloud/allowed.

Among other things, youth think and talk about the ways they apply comprehension strategies to

particular texts. Edge intersperses prompts throughout the reading selections for students to voice their applications of the targeted reading strategy. This scaffold provides a forum for publicly exploring what was just presented, for demystifying ways to comprehend texts. Additionally, each literature cluster and unit in Edge ends with opportunities for learners to jointly review and refine their applications of the strategy. This practice positions students as members of a learning community, a place where they can interact and improve their understandings of comprehension strategies.

Conclusion

The reading comprehension strategy instruction found in Edge provides adolescents rich and meaningful opportunities to take control of their reading. It shows youth that reading proficiently is not a matter of being innately smart but, in part, a matter of applying appropriate strategies.