Category: Reading & Literacy

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All About Reading Skills

Most people consider reading to be simple. Still, to read fluently and understand the text, one has to acquire several skills. As a parent, you want to support your child in developing reading comprehension that will be of great importance later on in life.

Their reading potential depends on a series of factors, including genetics and the environment they grow up in. With that in mind, to support your child, it is essential to be familiar with all the relevant skills they need to learn. Let’s get started.

The Requirements For Acquiring Reading Skills

As a parent, providing your children with reading opportunities from an early age is vital. While signing them up for a school that offers intrusive reading practices is an excellent method, you also need to practice with them at home. 

Motivating them to figure out the meaning from a print and allowing them opportunities to read and comprehend is a great start. Of course, for your children to be comfortable with reading and acquiring the appropriate skills, it is essential to introduce them to the alphabet writing system and how certain words are formed. 

While you should allow them the freedom to experiment with reading and comprehending the text, your role is to monitor that they aren’t memorizing improper pronunciation and provide them with a solid knowledge background before they get to more complex texts. 

What Are The Risks Factors?

Before we discuss how to improve your children’s reading comprehension, it is essential to determine the risk factors. 

Firstly, reading disruption is related to minority groups and families that aren’t in a great financial situation. Additionally, specific disorders such as dyslexia and autism impede reading fluency and comprehension. 

This is why it is necessary to be familiar with the risk factors and the skills that should be acquired/practiced.

What Are Reading Skills?

The first step to reading comprehension is decoding, and it is directed towards connecting spoken sounds with specific letters or words. It is the most efficient strategy for children to get familiar with words they have heard but haven’t read. 

Of course, the two main skills relevant to reading are fluency and vocabulary. Choosing practices at an adequate level and instructing your kid on different words and phrases is sure to help them with reading comprehension. 

Once again, daily practice is of utmost importance if you want good results. Additionally, helping your children connect words and sentences in text is called cohesion and can effectively treat reading disruptions. Lastly is working memory and attention. 

There isn’t a single skill that can be successfully acquired when putting in effort and focus.

Concluding Thoughts

While reading is something that children will typically learn in pre-school and primary school, it is vital to play your part as parents. Experimenting with different reading strategies and focusing on the skills mentioned above is the key to helping your kids with comprehension.

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Sound Games That Help Children Read Better

Reading is an essential skill that all children must learn, but it can be difficult for them to recognize the sounds in words. That’s where sound games come in. These games involve two strategies: blending and segmenting. 

Blending involves adding different sounds together to read a word. For example, to read the word ‘hop,’ the child may first say the individual sounds in the word that are h, o, and p and then add them together to say ‘hop.’ 

On the other hand, segmenting means to break a word down into the individual sounds that it contains. If we take the ‘hop’ example again, then segmenting this word would involve separating the word into h, s, and p sounds.

The Advantages Of Sound Games

Blending and segmenting games are significant because they help children read better. These games help students learn how to read words independently by assisting them in understanding the different sounds and syllables that make up each word. 

Once students learn how to identify the different sounds and blend them together, they can read independently without having to memorize the sound of each new word that they come across. 

Blending Games

Many blending games can be used in the classroom. A good one for younger children involves speaking slowly and enunciating each sound separately. To play this game, point to a picture of a car, for example. Then say the word car extremely slowly, like “ccaarrr.” 

Ask the children to say the word with you to learn to blend the different sounds and form a word. Or you could say the individual sounds like c, a, and r and ask children to blend them on their own to create the whole word.

Segmenting Games

A great way of teaching children to break down words into individual sounds or phonemes is through the segmenting song. You can make up your own song and even keep changing the word that needs to be segmented whenever you need to teach the class how to break down a new word. 

We recommend starting with 3 phoneme words because that’s easier for children in the beginning stages. 

When you sing this song, make sure you sing a word like ‘hat’ and then ask the children to tell you the beginning sound, then the middle sound, and finally the ending sound. This way they will learn all the sounds and have fun too.

Concluding Thoughts

Blending and segmenting games are vital when it comes to developing good reading skills in children. This is why children must be taught these two methods from a very young age.

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A Guide To Assessing Student Fluency

Learning how to read well is an essential life skill for children because it helps improve their comprehension and language abilities. This is why teachers focus so much on getting their students to practice reading.

To ensure that a child has good reading skills, the teacher needs to assess their reading fluency. If a student is not very fluent, then this is a strong indicator that they are having trouble reading. In such a case, the teacher will need to carry out fluency exercises with the student to help the child improve in this area.

Defining Fluency

Fluency is a skill that involves being able to read correctly without too many errors or word omissions. It also consists of the ability to read with good pacing. This means that the student should know when to pause or stop. They should read at a moderate speed and not too fast or too slow. A fluent reader is also able to bring appropriate facial expressions when reading.

Assessing Fluency

One way of assessing if a student is a fluent reader is to check their intonation and pacing. A fluent reader will have a good overall tone and pitch. So, they will read a word like ‘smiling’ in a happy tone, and their volume will increase and decrease in the right places as they read. 

Apart from this, if the student knows where to pause during reading, like at the end of a sentence, it also shows that the student is a fluent reader.

The WCPM Method

Another good way of measuring fluency is to use the WCPM method. This method is a useful way to measure the accuracy and speed with which a student can read. WCPM stands for words-correct-per-minute. 

The teacher will ask the student to read a paragraph and count how many errors the student commits during one minute to calculate the WCPM score for that student. If there are too many errors, then it is a warning sign that the child needs help developing fluency.

Benefits Of WCPM

The WCPM can help teachers make the best choices for their students by telling them exactly where each child stands in terms of fluency. That’s because the WCPM is known to show the student’s fluency level accurately. 

It also shows how well a child can comprehend what they are reading, especially when it comes to primary school children. Teachers can then use the WCPM results to devise effective reading strategies that will help students read better.

Concluding Thoughts

By assessing reading fluency, teachers can find out if a child is struggling to read. Based on this assessment, the teachers can then develop practice exercises to improve their students and become better overall readers.

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Skimming: A Reading Comprehension Tool

This is reading that happens at a fast pace and is often used when trying to derive general ideas as to what a passage is about. Skimming is a reading method in which you concentrate on the main ideas of the content. When skimming,  skip content that gives details,  stories and other fluff. Instead of reading every word, concentrate on the essential information. Skimming is reading the essence of the author’s messages rather than the details.

Why Skim?

You need the big picture or main points when you’re reading. Skimming as a type of previewing and can help you comprehend what you read. Knowing how to skim should help you become an efficient, strategic reader. You’ll become better at deciding what parts of the content are most essential. There might be times when your teacher wants you to comprehend the big picture, not the minutia. Skimming helps you comprehend the main points of the content and its relevance to your course.

Maximize your time. With skimming, you’ll be able to cover large amounts of content more rapidly and save yourself a lot of time. Maybe you don’t have time to complete your reading prior to class, but skimming should help you get the central points and attend class prepared to maximize in-class learning.

Skimming is an efficient way to refresh your memory of huge amounts of content before an exam. Skimming the content that you have read before helps you remember the material.

What Skimming Is Not

Skimming can cause issues if not carried out correctly. Skimming is not flipping through the content rapidly. When skimming, be intentional with what you select to read, and make sure that you are focused. Skimming is not a half-hearted attempt at reading. Make sure that you use it strategically and are able to walk away with the central ideas of the content.

Skimming Methods

Beginnings & endings: Read initial and final sentences of paragraphs, initial and final paragraphs of important sections, and introductions and summaries of chapters.

Visual & verbal cues: Look for signal words and phrases that show an author’s direction (e.g., however, although, moreover, in addition to).

Wheat vs. chaff: Read enough of content to decide if a section presents a central idea or support for a central idea.

Here are a few items that you should concentrate on when skimming:

  • Introduction and conclusion
  • Chapter summaries
  • Initial and final sentences
  • Titles, subtitles, and headings
  • Bold words and phrases
  • Charts, graphs, or images
  • End of chapter questions

When to Skim

There is some content that lends itself to skimming better than others. It is less beneficial to skim novels, poetry, and short stories or texts that do not have text features like tables of content, chapter summaries, headings, bold words, images, and diagrams. Nonfiction texts, like textbooks  and essays, are full of these types of content features and are suited for skimming.

Skimming can also be a tool for carrying out research and writing essays. When researching or writing, you won’t have to read each word closely but should benefit more from skimming while assessing your sources or identifying info essential to your work.

Lastly, know your context. There may be some content that you are better off reading thoroughly. Most professors tell you that they include details from the textbook and their lectures on assessments. You might have some classes that are just challenging to master, and you may find that reading thoroughly helps you comprehend ideas better. Prior to skimming, spend some time thinking about your classes, professors, and needs to decide if you have any content you may need to read more closely.

Active Reading Strategies

When skimming, it’s essential to continue to use active reading strategies. This keeps your brain focused and helps you comprehend and retain info better and longer. Here are some active reading strategies to pair with skimming:

Set a purpose for reading. Instead of approaching the content as something you just have to get through, find a purpose for it. What do you want to get out of it? Why are you reading it?

Preview. Look through the content before starting to concentrate on headings, illustrations, and end of chapter summaries. These elements give you an idea of the main ideas of the content and what you should concentrate on while skimming.

Make up a prediction. After previewing, make a prediction regarding what you believe the chapter or section will be about.

Activate prior knowledge. Make a list of what you know about the topic and what you want to know about it. Find and jot down any questions you have.

Summarize the main ideas. After a page or section, pause and write a 1-3 sentence summary. This keeps your brain engaged on what you are reading.

Generate questions. Ask and jot down questions that you have as you read the content and questions that you would want to ask a class if you were the teacher.

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A Teachers Guide to Reciprocal Teaching

Reciprocal teaching is a teaching strategy targeted at building reading comprehension skills by empowering the learners to take on the role of the educator. Reciprocal teaching makes learners active participants in the assignment. It also helps learners move from guided to independent readers and cements strategies for comprehending the meaning of a text.

Definition of Reciprocal Teaching

In reciprocal teaching, the educator models four comprehension strategies (summarizing, questioning, predicting, and clarifying) through guided group discussions. After the learners are comfortable with the strategies, they take turns leading comparable discussions in small groups.

The reciprocal teaching strategy was constructed in the 1980s by two University of Illinois educators (Annemarie Sullivan Palinkas and Ann L. Brown). Using reciprocal teaching, improvements have been documented in student reading comprehension in three months and retained for up to one year.

The Four Strategies

The techniques used in reciprocal teaching are summarizing, questioning, predicting, and clarifying. The techniques collaborate to increase comprehension.

Summarizing

Summarizing is a vital, though difficult, skill for readers of all ages. It requires that learners use a summarizing tactic to pick out the central idea and vital points of the content. The learners must put that info together to concisely explain the meaning and material of the passage in their own words.

Start with these summarizing prompts:

  • What is the most essential part of this text?
  • What is it about?
  • What happened initially?
  • What happened next?
  • How was the conflict resolved?

Questioning

Questioning the content helps learners develop critical thinking skills. Model this skill by asking questions that motivate learners to analyze rather than summarize. For instance, prompt the learners to consider why the author made certain decisions.

Start with these prompts to encourage learners to question the text:

  • Why do you believe?
  • What do you believe?
  • When [specific incident] happened, what did you do?

Predicting

Predicting is the process of making an educated guess. Learners can develop this skill by searching for clues to identify what will happen next in the story or what the story’s central message will be.

When studying a nonfiction text, learners should preview the text’s title, subheadings, bold print, and visuals like maps, tables, and diagrams. When studying a work of fiction, learners should look at the book’s cover, title, and illustrations. In both instances, the learners should look for clues that help them predict the author’s purpose and the topic of the content.

Help learners practice this skill by giving open-ended prompts that involve phrases like “I believe” and “because”:

  • I believe the book is about, because…
  • I predict I should learn, because…
  • I believe the author is trying to (entertain, persuade, inform), because…

Clarifying

Clarifying means using strategies to comprehend new words or complex content and self-monitoring to ensure reading comprehension. Comprehension issues might occur due to challenging words in the content, but they can also result from learners being unable to find the central idea or vital points of the passage or story.

Demonstrate clarifying techniques like rereading, using the glossary or a dictionary to define challenging words, or inferring meaning from context. Moreover, show learners how to find  problems with phrases like:

  • I didn’t understand the part____________.
  • This is challenging  because_________.
  • I am experiencing  difficulties __________.

Examples of Reciprocal Teaching in Action

To understand how reciprocal teaching works in the classroom, read this example, which focuses on “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle.

First, show learners the book cover. Read the title and author’s name. Ask, “What do you believe this book is about? Do you believe the author’s purpose is to inform, entertain, or persuade?

Then, read the first page. Ask, “What kind of egg do you believe is on the leaf? What do you believe will emerge from the egg?”

When the caterpillar devours all of the food, pause to decide if the learners need any additional information. Ask, “Has anyone eaten a pear? What about a plum? Have you ever tried salami?”

Later in the story, pause to identify  if the learners know the word “cocoon.” If not, help the learners make inferences of the word’s meaning from the content and images. Ask them to predict what will happen.

Lastly, after completing the story, guide the learners through the summarizing process. Help them find the main idea and vital points with the following questions.

  • Who is the story about? (Answer: a caterpillar.)
  • What did they do? (Answer: He ate additional food every day. On the last day, he ate so much food he developed a stomach ache.)
  • Then what happened? (Answer: He made a cocoon.)
  • Lastly, what happened at the end? (Answer: He came out of the cocoon in the form of a beautiful butterfly.)

Help learners develop their answers into a focused summary, like, “One day, a caterpillar started eating. He ate more and more each day until he developed a stomach ache. He constructed  a cocoon around himself, and, two weeks later, he came out of the cocoon as a beautiful butterfly.”

As learners become comfortable with these tactics, ask them to take turns facilitating the discussion. Ensure that every learner has a turn leading the discussion. Older learners who are reading in peer groups can start taking turns leading their group.

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Bring Novel Study to Your Classroom

If you decide to do a novel study with your students, you want the novel to be the central focus, not the assignments. There need to be some activities to ensure that learners do the close reading necessary to benefit from reading the book. Learning stations and partner or group projects all work well; learners have fun doing these activities, and you can integrate any skills you want to work on.

While-Reading

We have developed some ideas for learning station assignments that should work well while learners are still reading the novel.

Game Questions – Give index cards and fine point markers. Have learners write questions with answers, one per card, letting them know that their questions might be used for a game after the novel is finished.

Dramatic Reading – Set up a documenter and have learners select a scene to read aloud.

Conversation with the Main Character – Give learners time to write a series of e-mail or text messages from themselves to one of the central characters, with replies from the character.

Theme Bookmark – Give card stock cut into bookmark-sized rectangles and art supplies. Learners should make a bookmark that involves phrases and images to represent one theme from the book. Post a list of themes for learners to select from.

More Books – In this learning station, learners should either go to the library or use the internet. Tell learners to put together some good lists – a list of additional books by the author, a list of additional books in this genre, a list of additional books with a comparable theme, and a list of additional books with a central character who has comparable character traits.

After Completing the Novel

The following ideas are for after the class has finished reading the story.

Plot Sort – Give a set of cards with an event from the plot on each card. Learners should sort the cards into the right sequence.

Character Match – Create two groups of cards, one group with character names, and one group with character traits. Learners will match the character traits to the characters.

Theme Poster – Give a poster board or huge sheets of paper. Learners make a poster that discusses and gives examples of one theme from the story.

During Reading

The excitement of collbaorating with a group or partner can help kids get into the novel.

Costume Design – Learners collaborate to plan, draw, and describe costumes for the central character and other characters based on what they know about the characters themselves, the setting, and the time period.

Sets and Props – Learners collaborate to sketch out sets and write lists of props for essential scenes from the story.

Character Interview – The group plans out interview questions that they would like to ask the central character with answers that the central character may give. Two learners from the group present their interviews to the class.

For learners who are having issues comprehending the story, use partner reading. Two learners read together, taking turns, and then take turns quizzing each other about the pages just read. Give a “cheat sheet” of potential questions if that should help.

After Completing the Novel

These group projects should work well after the whole novel has been read.

A Good Yarn – Learners tape yarn to a wall to create a big plot map, then write the essential plot events on cards and post them at the correct places on their plot map.

Life-Size Character – Learners in the group trace around one person to create a life-size character shape on bulletin board paper. Upon drawing in the character’s features and attire, the group develops character traits around their person, using details from the novel to support their selection of each trait.

Big Themes, Mini-Book – Learners in the group divide up the essential themes from the story and collaborate to create pages for a booklet discussing each of the story’s central themes.

Since learners enjoy moving around from station to station, collaborating, and working on hands-on projects, many of these ideas should encourage them to enjoy the novel while they are reading it, instead of thinking about questions that they will have to answer.

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Teaching Students to Make Inferences Using the Goldilocks Strategy

Teaching learners how to make inferences while reading is a fundamental reading tactic that should help them take their meaning of the content deeper. When learners make inferences, they find clues in the content and use what they know from personal experience or prior knowledge to fully comprehend what the content is about. Great inferences are backed up by supporting details from the content and personal knowledge.

Teaching Using the Goldilocks Strategy

It’s essential to help learners to distinguish inferring from stating the obvious. For instance, a learner looking at the image of the baby can state the obvious by saying the baby is crying. A correct inference may involve that the baby is tired or hungry.  Applying prior knowledge of why babies cry, combined with the details in the image, makes this a plausible inference.

It is also essential to help learners comprehend the difference between inferences and predictions.  While they are relatable, they are not the same.  When learners predict, they guess what should happen next based on what they already know from the content and their prior knowledge.  After learners make inferences, they make a guess about what is happening. A plausible inference for why the baby is crying is that the baby is hungry or tired, while a sensible prediction may be that the mom or dad of the baby should come and pick the baby up to soothe him.

Lastly, although inferences are subjective, it is possible for learners to draw incorrect inferences.  For instance, if a learner looked at the image of the crying baby and said, “the baby is probably angry because his brother just made fun of him,” that would be incorrect because the baby in this image is too young to comprehend that he was being made fun of.

Establishing this foundation should be essential to your learners’ mastery of this reading strategy.

Activities to Use

There are several activities that should help learners to make inferences. First, help learners to comprehend that they are already making inferences in their everyday life. When they come to a conclusion about a specific situation, they are inferring. 

A simple way to first introduce inferring is to use images.  Showing learners several images that lend themselves to making inferences is a good way to get learners to use their inferring skills. 

Another cool way to introduce inferring is to create mystery bags. Gather several items that learners can use as clues to guess where you may be going or what you may be doing.  For instance, one bag may have a pair of sunglasses, some sunscreen, and a beach towel.  Learners would guess that you may be going to the beach.  Another bag may include ingredients and utensils needed to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Extend this activity by having learners create their own mystery bags.  Invite a few learners at a time to share their bag with the class while their classmates make inferences.

Analogous to the mystery bag, you can play a game where learners observe different shoes and guess which kind of person might wear that shoe.  For instance, a high-heel shoe would be worn by women, possibly going to a fancy restaurant.  A a winter boot is worn by someone planning to walk in the snow.

How to Model This Tactic

Once learners comprehend the concept of making inferences based on clues, help them to translate the skill into their reading.  Prior to jumping into longer stories, have learners practice their inferring skills using short sentences. Here are some sample sentences where learners can be asked to draw inferences:

My family has everything they need: tickets, popcorn, and candy! (Inference: The family is at the movies.)

•Sam had a  puzzled look on his face and then raised his hand in class. (Inference: Sam  is confused about something.)

•Everyone grabbed their raincoats and umbrellas. (Inference: It’s raining outside.)

The next step is to ask learners to apply this reading tactic to longer stories. Picture books can be a good tool to model the tactic of inferring.  You may even start with wordless image books as they are good for practicing inferring. 

Teach learners that good inferences use details from the content as well as their prior knowledge. 

Select Content That Helps Students Make Inferences

Use several picture books to model this cognitive flow. Allow learners to use this same cognitive flow with their independent reading books.  You might even want to provide them with a graphic organizer for them to document their thoughts.  This should make it easy for you to assess how they are connecting text evidence and prior knowledge to make their inferences.  The learners’ success in using this reading tactic starts with choosing anchor texts that best support making inferences.

Providing Independent Practice

When first using a new reading tactic, learners need constant reminders. Visuals like a bookmark to use while reading or a class poster that is displayed on a reading tactic bulletin board work wonderfully to help learners remember to use their experiences and knowledge, combined with clues in the text, to make inferences in the books they read.

Ask students to keep a record of their inferences during reading. Having learners jot down their inferences is vital when it comes to informing you of their comprehending of the tactic.  From their written details, you can see if they can make logical inferences.Writing down their thoughts keeps students accountable for their learning.

Evaluating Your Student’s Ability to Make Inferences

Assessment is at the heart of all teaching and learning. For additional informal assessments, take notes about a learner’s use of the inferring reading tactic during reading conferences. Consider the following when observing the learners’ use of the tactic:

Are learners using text evidence to support their inferences?

Are learners using prior knowledge and/or personal experiences to support their inferences?

Are their inferences logical?

Can learners justify their inferences?

Lastly, having a rubric written in a kid-friendly language is helpful when giving feedback to a learner on their capacity to make inferences. The rubric can give guidelines on how to make inferences while reading.

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Top 3 Games That May Help Your Child Read Better

Teaching your child to read can be challenging if you only use story-books because children generally have short attention spans. So, they will end up losing interest quickly if all you put in front of them are pages and pages of words. 

Instead, you can play games with them that help them read better and have fun too at the same time. These games can turn your kids into the next child prodigy.

Word-recognition Games

You will need around ten plain cards to make this game. Pick two of the cards and write a word on them like kitten or torch. Do the same with the rest of the cards, and this way, you will end up with 5-word pairs. Place all the cards face down on a table and ask the child to turn two of them simultaneously. 

If they are the same, the child can keep them and score a point. If they are different, then the next player gets to turn two cards. Keep going until all the pairs have been matched. The child with the most pairs wins! 

Playing this game is a sure-fire way of getting your kids to learn how to recognize words independently. This is especially recommended for kids in kindergarten or Class 1.

Beginning Sound Games

For this game, you will need to make 10-15 animal-shaped paper cut-outs. Fish shapes are a good idea because they are quite simple to cut. Label 2-3 of the cut-outs with one letter of the alphabet and draw a picture of an object that starts with that letter on it. For example, you could have a B pile with pictures of a ball, bat, or bottle. 

Make the other piles in the same way, then shuffle them and ask your child to turn each fish cut-out one by one and start adding them to the correct alphabet pile. To do this, your child will need to read the pictures, which will help them recognize that all the pictures in one pile start with the same beginning sound.

Rhyming Word Games

Rhyming games are the best way to teach your child about words that have similar spelling patterns. So, a rhyme with the words mat, bat, cat, and hat can help children see that all these words end with “at.” 

Once the child understands how to pick out these spelling patterns, you can read poems and nursery rhymes with them while asking them to identify all the rhyming words they recognize. 

Concluding Thoughts

All the games mentioned above can help children recognize words and spelling patterns. Parents can use them as a means to helping their kids become much better readers. Children who have good reading skills always do better on comprehension tests and score a higher final grade.

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Post-Reading Strategies That You Can Use in Your Class Today

Post-reading strategies give learners a way to summarize, reflect, and question what they have just read. Here are three post-reading teaching strategies to try in your class today.

Exit Slips

The exit slip post-reading tactic is used to help learners reflect on what they have just learned. It helps them sort out ideas and how or what they feel about the material learned. This tactic requires learners to use critical thinking, a skill that is important in today’s world.

Exit slips are good because they only take learners a few minutes to complete, and educators get an informal assessment of how well the learners understood what they just learned.

How to use the strategy

  1. Think about the main idea you want learners to get out of the reading or lesson.
  2. After the lesson, pass out the exit slips to learners.
  3. You can choose to differentiate the exit slips based on your learners’ needs.
  4. After learners jot down their responses, be sure to gather the slips.
  5. Review the slips to decide how to meet the needs of all learners.

Examples:

  • Write down one thing you have learned today.
  • Talk about one thing that you learned today that can be used in the real world.
  • Talk about one thing that you learned today that you would like to learn more about.
  • One thing that surprised me today is.
  • Rate your comprehension of today’s topic on a scale from  1-5.

Frame Routine

Frame routine is a class tactic that uses a graphic organizer to assist learners in organizing topics, central ideas, and critical vital details of what they have just read. This strategy helps learners summarize what they have learned.

How to use the strategy

  1. Choose the topic. The topic is the title of what you just read.
  2. Identify the central idea. Learners then document the vital ideas of the topic.
  3. Talk about the details. Learners write details in the appropriate sections.
  4. Create the central or big idea of the content. Learners write a brief summary of the conclusion that they have come to.
  5. Study the info on the frame. Once the info is clearly stated and organized on the frame, the educator evaluates it and plans follow-up activities to extend learner learning.

Question the Author

Questioning the author is a tactic that requires learners to pose questions and engages them actively in a text. This comprehension tactic challenges learners’ comprehension of the content and encourages learners to ask questions of the author.

Question the author has lots of benefits, one being that it engages all learners in the content. It also helps to cement their comprehension, as well as learn to critique the author’s writing.

How to use the strategy

  1. Choose an interesting passage that would make for a good discussion.
  2. Bookmark spots that you want to pause during the content so learners can gain greater comprehension.
  3. Construct specific questions for each spot to ask learners. What is the author trying to convey? Why do you believe the author used this phrase?
  4. Provide a brief passage to learners with a few questions, and model how you think through your answers to the questions.
  5. Challenge learners to read and answer the questions that you have constructed.

Teacher modeling of each post-reading tactic is vital in order for the tactic to be a success. Post-reading comprehension strategies like the ones discussed above drive home the fact that once you have completed your reading, you still have to comprehend what you have just read. Learners need to summarize vital ideas and concepts after reading to help them comprehend the info that was learned and store it in their long-term memory.

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The Importance of While-Reading Learning Experiences

While-Reading Learning Experiences are activities that help learners concentrate on facets of the content and to understand it better. The objective of these activities is to help learners to read as they would read if the content were written in their first language.

During this stage, learners should be able to:

  1. confirm predictions
  2. gather info
  3. organize info

What are Examples of While-Reading Learning Experiences?

The number of while-reading learning experiences that you can do in the class depends on the innovativeness of the educator.

You can use while-reading learning experiences that are based on traditional forms of assessment or you can use tech if you are good at integrating it in classes.

The following are examples of while-reading activities that you can use in the class.

1. Identify Topic Sentences

Identify topic sentences and the central idea of paragraphs.

The central idea of a paragraph is the author’s message about the topic.

Please note that every paragraph includes a topic sentence that identifies the central idea of the paragraph.

2 General and Specific Ideas

Differentiate between general and specific ideas.

General ideas convey the central point or central idea of a piece of writing. Specific ideas provide evidence to define the general or central idea and verify that it is correct.

3. Identify the Connectors

Find the connectors to understand how they link ideas within the content.

There are various kinds of connectors.

4. Confirm Prediction

Check if predictions and guesses were verified.

This can be facilitated when a reading class starts with one of these pre-reading activities.

5. Skim a Text for Information

Skimming is the capacity to locate the central idea within a text. Using this reading tactic should help learners to become proficient readers.

Skimming reading should also help learners to be  flexible readers.

6. Answer Literal and Inferential questions

Literal refers to what the content says and inferential is using the content as a starting point to find a deeper meaning.

7. Inferring

An additional while-reading activity consists of inferring the meaning of new words or phrases using the context.

Language learners rely on context to identify the meaning of a word, a reading tactic used a lot when you do a lot of reading.

8. Coding Text

Coding text involves teaching learners a method of margin marking so they can put a question mark next to a statement they don’t comprehend or an exclamation mark next to a part of the book that shocked them.

9. Student-to-learner conversation

This kind of activity is one that promotes the integration of two additional skills since you read the paragraph and then talk to a peer and listen to what they have to say.

You can ask learners to have a conversation after they have completed a sentence, a paragraph, or a stanza of a poem so they can discuss any questions they may have.

10. Scan the content for specific info

Scanning is reading the content rapidly to find specific info.

You scan or skim when you look for your favorite show in the TV guide or when you view your cousin’s phone number in your contact list.

11. Answer a Short Quiz

This a traditional way to assess what students have learned from the reading.

Concluding Thoughts If you want to use these reading tactics successfully, you need to comprehend how the reading content is structured as well as have a clear idea about what specific info you have to locate.