Reading to learn strategies
These literacy strategies are used by our teachers across all subjects at our school.
1. Preparing for Reading
- Preparing for reading enables all students in a class to follow a text as it is read aloud. It gives students the background knowledge they need to understand the text.
- Teachers provide a summary that tells students ‘what the text says’ in a way all students can understand.
- The text is then read aloud, either by the teacher, or students taking turns, and discussed in the class.
2. Paragraph by Paragraph Reading
Used for unpacking content in texts e.g. text books, articles, video clips
- After reading and discussing the text, teacher revisits each paragraph.
- Long or difficult texts can be read one paragraph at a time. The teacher guides students to highlight two or three key points in each paragraph.
- This highlighted information is transformed into Note making for the class. Students scribe notes on the whiteboard and copy these in books.
- The teacher uses a gradual release of responsibility that scaffolds students to employ this strategy themselves.
3. Detailed Reading
Used for unpacking meaning in texts e.g. novels, poems, plays, Math word problems
- After reading the whole text, teacher selects a small section to study in detail.
- Teacher uses questions to unpack deep meaning in the text while students highlight key words in each sentence.
4. Intensive Strategies
Used to teach the mechanics of writing e.g. punctuation, grammar, spelling
- The teacher uses this same small section of text to break down into clauses and word groups, then to words and their grammatical forms.
- Students label sections of text, highlight and cut into pieces to identify and study their function.
5. Joint Construction
Used to teach how to write a whole text e.g. explanation, discussion, report
- Teacher guides the class to write a new text sentence by sentence using the notes.
- The teacher, or the students, take turns to write on white board, while students copy in books.
- Students then move to practise writing the same kind of text independently.