Strategies for Teaching
Reading Skills
October 6, 2011
Why are we having this
conversation?
National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP)
 Contexts for Reading
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Reading for literary experience
Reading for information
Reading to perform a task
Aspects of Reading
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Form a general understanding
Developing an interpretation
Making reader/text connections
Examining content and structure
Basic (265)
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Twelfth-grade students performing at the Basic
level should be able to identify elements of
meaning and form and relate them to the overall
meaning of the text. They should be able to
make inferences, develop interpretations, make
connections between texts, and draw
conclusions; and they should be able to provide
some support for each. They should be able to
interpret the meaning of a word as it is used in
the text.
Proficient (302)

Twelfth-grade students performing at the
Proficient level should be able to locate
and integrate information using
sophisticated analyses of the meaning and
form of the text. These students should be
able to provide specific text support for
inferences, interpretative statements, and
comparisons within and across texts.
Advanced (346)

Twelfth-grade students performing at the
Advanced level should be able to analyze
both the meaning and the form of the text
and provide complete, explicit, and precise
text support for their analyses with
specific example. They should be able to
read across multiple texts for a variety of
purposes, analyzing and evaluating them
individually and as a set.
NAEP Results
12th grade 2009
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The average reading score for the nation's twelfth-graders
was 2 points higher in 2009 than in 2005. The score in
2009, however, was 4 points lower than the score for the
first reading assessment in 1992.
White students, Asian/Pacific Islander students, and male
students made gains since 2005.
Thirty-eight percent of twelfth-graders performed at or
above the Proficient level in reading in 2009, which was
higher than the percentage in 2005, but not significantly
different from the percentages in other earlier assessment
years.
NAEP Results

http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_200
9/gr12_national.asp?tab_id=tab2&subtab
_id=Tab_1#tabsContainer
NAEP Results

Overall results
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Small gains overall for 8th graders
No change in achievement gap
No change, females continue to out perform
males
No gains in lower-income students
No significant change in Ohio scores
http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2009/sta
te_g8.asp?subtab_id=Tab_1&tab_id=tab1#tab
sContainer
Characteristics of Good Readers
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When they come to an unfamiliar word, good
readers use a variety of word analysis strategies,
such as context clues, root words, prefixes,
suffixes, etc. Poor readers “sound it out,” rarely
connecting the word to a meaning.
Good readers are metacognitively aware, they
self-correct when they make a mistake. Poor
readers often ignore their errors, or fail to notice
errors.
Good readers read to construct meaning, poor
reader read to decode letters.
Characteristics of Good Readers
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Good readers read and reread, becoming
increasingly fluent; poor readers seldom read
leading to problems establishing fluency.
Good readers pay attention to authors and
illustrators, seeking out additional choices based
on what they have enjoyed in the past, poor
readers seldom notice those details and usually
read only when material is assigned.
Good readers get excited about books and
discuss them with friends, teachers, and family to
share their enthusiasm, poor readers don’t
discuss what they read unless required.
Characteristics of Struggling Readers
Read too fast, blurring words, rushing
through punctuation
 Do not reread to clarify meaning
 Read to finish rather than to understand
 Do not predict without prompting
 Do not easily make inferences, draw
conclusion, or make generalization
 Have difficulty summarizing important
points from the text

Characteristics of Struggling Readers
Do not set a purpose for reading other
than to complete the assignment
 Do not connect events in the text to other
texts, personal experiences, etc.
 Do not recognize when comprehension is
not taking place, or do not know how to
adjust, continues reading
 Do not know how to use text features
(charts, graphs, typeface, etc.)

Literate
Aliterate
Illiterate
Type of
Reader
Avid
Dormant
Uncommitted
Unmotivated
Unskilled
Enjoys
Reading?
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
Makes time
to read
Yes
No
No
No
May or may
not
Identifies as
a reader
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
Says reading
is...
A way of life
A neat
experience
Knowing
words
Saying
words
Figuring out
words
Says books
are
Entertaining
Entertaining
Functional
Functional
Functional
Strategies To Support Reading
Comprehension
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DRTA – Directed Reading Thinking Activity
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Cycle of predicting and summarizing to
enhance comprehension and metacognition
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Begin by predicting from the title of the reading
Stop periodically to summarize, then predict what will
come next
Works very well with text that is arranged with
headings and subheadings, if not students have to
find their own stopping places
Often referred to as “chunking” text
Strategies To Support Reading
Comprehension

Process Guides
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Help to guide students through the text to sort
out important information
Prepared by the teacher in advance
Points the way through the reading,
information student should focus on,
information they can skim
For example….
Process Guide Example
1. Compare definitions of and purposes for cooperative
learning in Cruickshank and Kagan.
2. Don’t worry about knowing STAD, TGT, etc. focus on
theories behind cooperative learning and what makes
cooperative learning different from group work, such as
pgs. 244-45.
3. Focus on purposes, characteristics, definitions, when to use
for
-discovery learning
-constructivism
-direct instruction
4. For direct instruction, pay more attention to research
based, esp. pages 260, 263-64.
5. Chapter 9, p. 283 difference between formative and
summative assessment.
Strategies To Support Reading
Comprehension

Skimming and Scanning
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Skimming – preview or review
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Read the first full paragraph
Read the first sentence of each subsequent
paragraph
Read the last full paragraph
Scanning
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Eyes scan the text looking for a particular piece of
information and then stop
Works well to review, good for names, dates,
locations, bold type, etc.
Classroom Activities That Can Support
Reading Comprehension
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Linguistic Roulette
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1. Assign a reading selection; it can be one piece for the
whole class, or different pieces for different groups.
2. Divide the selection(s) into smaller sections.
3. Students read the selected portion of the text.
4. After reading is complete, students go back and scan
the selection and choose a single sentence. They may
choose a sentence because it is interesting, exciting,
confusing, funny, informative, etc.
5. Around the group, students share the sentence they
chose and the reason for choosing it. Students discuss
choices and help each other to clear up any confusion,
especially if the choice was because the student didn’t
understand.
6. Repeat pattern until the selection has been read and
all students have shared their final sentence choice.
Classroom Activities That Can Support
Reading Comprehension
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Think Aloud
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The purpose of a think aloud is to model
metacognition in a very overt manner for
students, for them to “see inside your head” as
you are reading and comprehending.
This is not something that occurs in isolation,
it should be in the context of a lesson that
uses the material.
You decide how much discussion to include
with the think aloud model. Purists of this
approach do not include discussion while they
are modeling.
Classroom Activities That Can
Support Reading Comprehension
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Question-Answer Relationship (QAR)
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Self-generated questions that help keep the
reader interested and are used to seek
information
Levels of questions
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Text explicit – the answer is quoted directly in the
text
Text implicit – the answer must be implied from the
text
Script implicit – the answer requires text, prior
knowledge, and experiences
Classroom Activities That Can
Support Reading Comprehension
QAR cont’d.
 Teacher models several levels of questions
 This strategy facilitates comprehension by
identifying the type of question being
asked and then the resources necessary to
answer it
 Can be used with individuals or in small
group discussions
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Classroom Activities That Can
Support Reading Comprehension
QAR cont’d.
 Question labels
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Right there (text explicit)
Think and search (text implicit)
Text and you (script and text implicit)
On your own (script implicit)
References
Improving Adolescent Literacy (2008)
Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey
 “No Time, No Interest, No Way!” (1996)
Kylene Beers, School Library Journal
 Content Area Reading (2010) Richard
Vacca, Jo Anne Vacca, Maryann Mraz
 When Kids Can’t Read: What Teachers
Can Do (2003) Kylene Beers
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