Kylene Beers
Strategy List
Pre-Reading Strategies
Anticipation Guides (74-80) – prereading strategy that encourages students to
connect to ideas and make predictions, look for cause and effect relationships as
they read, generalize, and explore their own responses to the text.
K-W-L (80-86) – What I Know, What I Want to Learn, What I Learned – provides a
framework that helps readers access their knowledge about a topic before they
read, consider what they want to learn, and then record what they have learned
once they finish reading.
Probable Passage (87-93) – forces students to think about the characters, setting,
conflict, resolution and vocabulary of the story before they read to get them to
predict and anticipate what might happen.
Word Splash (94) – very similar to Probable Passage, a strategy in which you
“splash” some word or phrases from a text on the board and have students write a
prediction statement about what this text might be about based on these words. Use
8-15 words.
Tea Party (94-101) – offers students a chance to consider parts of the text before
they ever actually read it. Encourages active participation with the text and gives
active adolescents a chance to get up and move around the classroom. Allows
students to predict what they think will happen in the text as they make inferences,
see causal relationships, compare and contrast, practice sequencing and draw on
their prior experiences.
During-Reading Strategies
Say Something (105-110) –
Rereading (110-118) –
Think-Aloud (42-44, 119-127) – to model / practice how a skilled reader
comprehends a text.
Double-Entry Journals (127-129) –
Logographic Cues (129-130) –
Bookmarks (130-132) –
ABCs of Comparing & Contrasting (132-133) –
Post-it Notes (133-134) –
Character Bulletin Boards (134) Syntax Surgery (69-71, 135) – marking up a passage to show students how
pronouns relate to nouns or how to use context to define unknown words or how to
add details to events described.
Signal Words (136) After-Reading Strategies
Likert Scales
Semantic Differential Scales
Somebody Wanted But So [SWBS]
Retellings
Text Reformulation
It Says-I Say (165) –
Sketch to Stretch
Save the Last Word for Me
Most Important Word
Other Strategies
If-Then Chart (28) – to assess dependent readers’ needs.
Mini-Lessons (58-59) – to clarify or provide direct instruction about something
students need to be applying in that day’s work. Short, 5-15 minutes.
Inferences (61-63) – practice with movie theatre example to exercise students’
ability to connect what is in the text with what is in the mind to create an educated
guess.