Strategies that Work

Reading Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement

Activating Background Knowledge and Making Connections: A Bridge

from the New to the Known

• A bridge from the New to the Known• Background knowledge is the foundation

of our thinking• Schema theory – explains how our

previous experiences, knowledge, emotions and understanding have a major effect on what and how we learn (Anderson and Pearson, 1984)

Questioning: The Strategy that Propels Readers Forward

• In school we usually demand answers• Questions are at the heart of teaching and

learning• Questions open the doors to

understanding• Proficient readers ask questions before,

during and after reading. They question content, the author, events, issues and ideas in the text.

Making Inferences: Reading Between the Lines

• Draw a conclusion or making an interpretation that is not explicitly stated in the text

• Take what you already know, your background knowledge, and merge it with clues in the text to draw a conclusion, predict an outcome or arrive at a big idea

Visualizing:Becoming Wordstruck

• Paint a picture or movie of the story in your mind

• This helps you to stop, think about, and understand the information

Determining Importance:Distilling the Essence of Text

• What we determine to be important in text depends on our purpose for reading it.

• Focus on important information and merge it with what we already know to expand our understanding of the topic.

Summarizing and Synthesizing Information:

The Evolution of Thought

• Summarizing is about retelling the information and paraphrasing it

• You have to extract essential ideas

• Synthesize, or merge them, with your thinking to shape it into your own thought

• This involves seeing the big picture

Resources

• All of the previous slides are taken from Strategies that Work by Harvey and Goudvis (2007)