Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement
- Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, 2nd Edition (2007)
(In this 2nd edition, authors stress understanding and engagement. Book title phrase and
engagement is new to this edition.)
Chapter 12: Content Literacy:
Reading to Learn in Social Studies and Science
1. All six comprehension strategies can be used when reading social studies and
science texts.
2. Engage kids in real world reading and focused content reading.
3. Real world reading is the kind of reading we do outside of school.
 newspapers
 magazines
 nonfiction books
 historical fiction
4. Focused content reading is text heavy and the kind of reading we do in school that
is directly related to our content area.
 Textbooks
1. Interactive Read-Alouds with Picture Books
 common experience for the whole class
 provides an imaginative entry point into times and places that are far way and
long ago
 can use props and artifacts to make story events and characters come alive
 kids can act out important events or take on the roles of historic characters
 ask kids to do gather / categorize information by creating concept maps in
ways that make sense to them. for example, concept maps show how historic
details support a larger idea.
6. Learning and Teaching Information from a Variety of Features
o photographs
o diagrams
o close-ups
o cut-aways
o maps
o charts
o tables
o graphs
o captions
7. Information and ideas in science articles are often organized around cause-effect
relationships or a problem-solution format. Other text structures are
question-answer, comparison-contrast, description, and sequence.
o Give kids a “heads up” about these different text structures.
 Provide note-taking scaffolds to help students organize information and
determine importance of text.
Chapter 14: Content Literacy
Active Reading with Textbooks
“When our goal is to cover the textbook, kids don’t learn much. And plodding
through the textbook page by page leaves everyone bored and overwhelmed with
information. The challenge is to teach kids how to read textbooks and learn
from them. If there were ever a need for readers to use comprehension strategies,
this is it!” S. H. & A. G.
Strategies (These are the same for fiction and nonfiction!)
Making Connections
Asking Questions
Visualizing
Making Inferences
Determining Importance
Synthesizing
Practices
o text lifting
o thinking aloud
o interactive read-alouds
o strategic note taking
o leaving tracks of our thinking on sticky notes
Teaching Kids to Read Textbooks
(For more information, refer to Strategies That Work (2007), pp. 236 – 238.)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Navigate the format.
Learning from text and visual features.
Previewing the chapter.
Vocabulary and Concept Lessons
Note-taking Lessons
Summarizing and Synthesizing the Information
Additional Suggestions from Harvey Daniels and Steve Zemelman’s Subjects Matter:
Every Teacher’s Guide to Content-Area Reading (2004)
1. Have empathy. You know the information in the textbook, but the kids don’t.
2. Help kids get started. Front-load our teaching so kids can understand the text.
3. Don’t leave kids alone with their textbooks. Make sure kids work in pairs,
groups, and teams to discuss and sort out ideas.
4. Choose wisely. Assignments should be selective and strategic.
5. Supplement richly. Textbooks are no longer the sole source for content
learning. Kids need a wide range of text for content area reading.