Strategies for Successful Reading
For students with learning difficulties, comprehension is particularly difficult in language. Not only do they have to figure out and develop their vocabulary and put them together to make sentences, but they also have to understand what they are reading, make meaning to that understanding, and create inferences and connections. It certainly isn’t the easiest task that can be done.
There are many strategies that a child, adolescent, and even an adult, can use while reading a particular text, whether it is fictitious or not. In our class, we try to utilize these strategies every day, as I attempt to get the students thinking about it on their own. I have highly suggested that these strategies be practiced at home as well, to strengthen their practices.
1. Predicting – the interesting thing about predicting, is that it does not have to be correct. Students are able to look at the title of a passage, of a chapter, or of a novel, and can predict what it is about. They could even utilize pictures, if they are provided on the cover of a book. Predicting uses a person’s imagination to guess what the passage will be about. That’s exactly it what they are supposed to do – guess! While everyone wants their guess to be correct, it’s not about that. The practice of predicting actually comes after the reading, or after finding out what is happening, and examining how correct or incorrect they were. This puts into practice their understanding and ability to recall the story and how much it fit, or didn’t fit, into their prediction.
The other amazing thing about the predicting stage is that it can occur throughout a story, not just at the beginning. As new and exciting things occur in a reading, more questions can come up about what is next. Continuing to predict will continue to help with comprehension and understanding of the reading.
2. Connections – It is very important while reading, for readers to make connections with real-life experiences or understandings. There are three ways of doing this that are important to practice:
i. text-to-self: Connecting things read with personal experiences. This could be feeling a similar way as a character in the text, experiencing the same opportunity, doing the same activity, or anything closely related to something the reader has experienced him/herself.
ii. text-to-world: In this type of connection, readers must think outside of themselves and into the world around them. This is a tough one, as it is hard to separate something that happens to yourself from the world at large. An example, would be if the text being read has a war happening in it, then the reader could connect it to their knowledge of the fact that war occurs in many places, and even Canada has been to war. It seems simple, but it’s not always easy to connect something from a text to the world.
ii. text-to-text: This final connection has readers think about past books, readings, movies, or television shows that they have watched. Anything that is a story, is a text! Find a commonality between what the student is reading currently, with something they have read before, something they have watched in a movie or television show, or something they have heard in a song. All of these are appropriate texts to relate things to.
Depending on what is read, there should be at least one type of connection that can be made. It is not always possible to connect with all three, but using these connections will assist readers in understanding what they are reading as they relate it to things they already understand and have knowledge about already.
3. Questioning Personal Understanding – Understanding is the difficult concept we are trying to attack in these reading strategies, so why not attack it head on? In this section, there are particular questions used to help see how much understanding has been grasped through reading. It asks readers to recall and restate what has happened with explanations of why. The why understanding will assist in students comprehension and remembering of the events that occur throughout the passage.
4. Visualizing – This one’s my favourite, but is sometimes the most difficult with students with learning disabilities. It requires an imagination to build a picture in the readers’ mind of where things are happening and what it looks like, thus building on their understanding. I often stop in the middle of a sentence that is describing what someone looks like or a scene where the characters are, and ask students to imagine what it looks like. It doesn’t have to look the same to everyone, as everyone’s imagination is different. Depending on what has been described, certain aspects (whether it’s the colour, or type of clothing) will be similar, but the unknown values of the area or character can be made up in their mind. Having readers draw out a picture, or describe what they are seeing, helps them remember that and will draw importance to that moment.
5. Evaluating –This section asks readers about how realistic the story is and whether or not they agree with what occurred. Having students reflect on these aspects personalizes the story and creates meaning to what they have read. Creating this opinion helps develop their understanding of what happened and why it happened.
6. Review and Respond - This section has readers asking about why things were written the way they were written by the author. While these why questions may not be answered (as we can’t exactly call up the author and ask him/her our questions), the fact that they are coming up with questions means that they are following the text and wanting to know more about the purpose behind writing it.
All of these used together create a strong relationship toward successful reading. While the strategies take work themselves, after utilizing it often enough and incorporating it into all subjects (or most), it becomes natural for students to use them – and they don’t even notice it!
All the best with your current and future reading endeavours!
