Book reading strategies

Strategies for Reading Comprehension :: Read Naturally, Inc.

Comprehension: The Goal of Reading

Comprehension, or extracting meaning from what you read, is the ultimate goal of reading. Experienced readers take this for granted and may not appreciate the reading comprehension skills required. The process of comprehension is both interactive and strategic. Rather than passively reading text, readers must analyze it, internalize it and make it their own.

In order to read with comprehension, developing readers must be able to read with some proficiency and then receive explicit instruction in reading comprehension strategies (Tierney, 1982).

​ Strategies for reading comprehension in Read Naturally programs

​General Strategies for Reading Comprehension

The process of comprehending text begins before children can read, when someone reads a picture book to them. They listen to the words, see the pictures in the book, and may start to associate the words on the page with the words they are hearing and the ideas they represent.

In order to learn comprehension strategies, students need modeling, practice, and feedback. The key comprehension strategies are described below.

Using Prior Knowledge/Previewing

When students preview text, they tap into what they already know that will help them to understand the text they are about to read. This provides a framework for any new information they read.

Predicting

When students make predictions about the text they are about to read, it sets up expectations based on their prior knowledge about similar topics. As they read, they may mentally revise their prediction as they gain more information.

Identifying the Main Idea and Summarization

Identifying the main idea and summarizing requires that students determine what is important and then put it in their own words. Implicit in this process is trying to understand the author’s purpose in writing the text.

Questioning

Asking and answering questions about text is another strategy that helps students focus on the meaning of text. Teachers can help by modeling both the process of asking good questions and strategies for finding the answers in the text.

Making Inferences

In order to make inferences about something that is not explicitly stated in the text, students must learn to draw on prior knowledge and recognize clues in the text itself.

Visualizing

Studies have shown that students who visualize while reading have better recall than those who do not (Pressley, 1977). Readers can take advantage of illustrations that are embedded in the text or create their own mental images or drawings when reading text without illustrations.

Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Narrative Text

Narrative text tells a story, either a true story or a fictional story. There are a number of strategies that will help students understand narrative text.

Story Maps

Teachers can have students diagram the story grammar of the text to raise their awareness of the elements the author uses to construct the story. Story grammar includes:

• Setting: When and where the story takes place (which can change over the course of the story).
• Characters: The people or animals in the story, including the protagonist (main character), whose motivations and actions drive the story.
• Plot: The story line, which typically includes one or more problems or conflicts that the protagonist must address and ultimately resolve.
• Theme: The overriding lesson or main idea that the author wants readers to glean from the story. It could be explicitly stated as in Aesop’s Fables or inferred by the reader (more common).

​ Printable story map (blank)

Retelling

Asking students to retell a story in their own words forces them to analyze the content to determine what is important. Teachers can encourage students to go beyond literally recounting the story to drawing their own conclusions about it.

Prediction

Teachers can ask readers to make a prediction about a story based on the title and any other clues that are available, such as illustrations. Teachers can later ask students to find text that supports or contradicts their predictions.

Answering Comprehension Questions

Asking students different types of questions requires that they find the answers in different ways, for example, by finding literal answers in the text itself or by drawing on prior knowledge and then inferring answers based on clues in the text.

Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Expository Text

Expository text explains facts and concepts in order to inform, persuade, or explain.

The Structure of Expository Text

Expository text is typically structured with visual cues such as headings and subheadings that provide clear cues as to the structure of the information. The first sentence in a paragraph is also typically a topic sentence that clearly states what the paragraph is about.

Expository text also often uses one of five common text structures as an organizing principle:

• Cause and effect
• Problem and solution
• Compare and contrast
• Description
• Time order (sequence of events, actions, or steps)

Teaching these structures can help students recognize relationships between ideas and the overall intent of the text.

Main Idea/Summarization

A summary briefly captures the main idea of the text and the key details that support the main idea. Students must understand the text in order to write a good summary that is more than a repetition of the text itself.

​K-W-L

There are three steps in the K-W-L process (Ogle, 1986):

1. What I Know: Before students read the text, ask them as a group to identify what they already know about the topic. Students write this list in the “K” column of their K-W-L forms.
2. What I Want to Know: Ask students to write questions about what they want to learn from reading the text in the “W” column of their K-W-L forms. For example, students may wonder if some of the “facts” offered in the “K” column are true.
3. What I Learned: As they read the text, students should look for answers to the questions listed in the “W” column and write their answers in the “L” column along with anything else they learn.

After all of the students have read the text, the teacher leads a discussion of the questions and answers.

 Printable K-W-L chart (blank)

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers provide visual representations of the concepts in expository text. Representing ideas and relationships graphically can help students understand and remember them. Examples of graphic organizers are:

Tree diagrams that represent categories and hierarchies

Tables that compare and contrast data

Time-driven diagrams that represent the order of events

Flowcharts that represent the steps of a process​

​

Teaching students how to develop and construct graphic organizers will require some modeling, guidance, and feedback. Teachers should demonstrate the process with examples first before students practice doing it on their own with teacher guidance and eventually work independently.

Strategies for Reading Comprehension in Read Naturally Programs

Several Read Naturally programs include strategies that support comprehension:

Bibliography

Honig, B. , L. Diamond, and L. Gutlohn. (2013). Teaching reading sourcebook, 2nd ed. Novato, CA: Arena Press.

Ogle, D. M. (1986). K-W-L: A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. The Reading Teacher 38(6), pp. 564–570.

Pressley, M. (1977). Imagery and children’s learning: Putting the picture in developmental perspective. Review of Educational Research 47, pp. 586–622.

Tierney, R. J. (1982). Essential considerations for developing basic reading comprehension skills. School Psychology Review 11(3), pp. 299–305.

Reading Strategies & Tips | Academic Success Center

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Reading Strategies & Tips

Reading is a foundational learning activity for college-level courses. Assigned readings prepare you for taking notes during lectures and provide you with additional examples and detail that might not be covered in class.  Also, according to research, readings are the second most frequent source of exam questions (Cuseo, Fecas & Thompson, 2007).  

Reading a college textbook effectively takes practice and should be approached differently than reading a novel, comic book, magazine, or website. Becoming an effective reader goes beyond completing the reading in full or highlighting text.  There are a variety of strategies you can use to read effectively and retain the information you read.

Consider the following quick tips and ideas to make the most of your reading time:

• Schedule time to read. Reading is an easy thing to put off because there is often no exact due date.  By scheduling a time each week to do your reading for each class, you are more likely to complete the reading as if it were an assignment.  Producing a study guide or set of notes from the reading can help to direct your thinking as you read.
• Set yourself up for success.  Pick a location that is conducive to reading.  Establish a reasonable goal for the reading, and a time limit for how long you’ll be working. These techniques make reading feel manageable and make it easier to get started and finish reading. 
• Choose and use a specific reading strategy.  There are many strategies that will help you actively read and retain information (PRR or SQ3R – see the handouts and videos).  By consciously choosing a way to approach your reading, you can begin the first step of exam preparation or essay writing.  Remember: good readers make stronger writers.
• Monitor your comprehension. When you finish a section, ask yourself, "What is the main idea in this section?  Could I answer an exam question about this topic?" Questions at the end of chapters are particularly good for focusing your attention and for assessing your comprehension. If you are having difficulty recalling information or answering questions about the text, search back through the text and look for key points and answers. Self-correction techniques like revisiting the text are essential to assessing your comprehension and are a hallmark technique of advanced readers (Caverly & Orlando, 1991).
• Take notes as you read. Whether they’re annotations in the margins of the book, or notes on a separate piece of paper. Engage with the reading through your notes – ask questions, answer questions, make connections, and think about how these ideas integrate with other information sources (like lecture, lab, other readings, etc.)

Want to dive in a little deeper? Take a look at Kathleen King's tips below to help you get the most out of your reading, and to read for success. You'll see that some are similar to the tips above, but some offer new approaches and ideas; see what works for you:

1. Read sitting up with good light, and at a desk or table.
2. Keep background noise to a minimum. Loud rock music will not make you a better reader. The same goes for other distractions: talking to roommates, kids playing nearby, television or radio. Give yourself a quiet environment so that you can concentrate on the text.
3. Keep paper and pen within reach.
4. Before beginning to read, think about the purpose of the reading. Why has the teacher assigned the reading? What are you supposed to get out of it? Jot down your thoughts.
5. Survey the reading. Look at the title of the piece, the subheadings. What is in the dark print or stands out? Are there illustrations or graphs?
6. Strategize your approach: read the introduction and conclusion, then go back and read the whole assignment, or read the first line in every paragraph to get an idea of how the ideas progress, then go back and read from the beginning.
7. Scan effectively: scan the entire reading, and then focus on the most interesting or relevant parts to read in detail.
8. Get a feel for what's expected of you by the reading. Pay attention to when you can skim and when you need to understand every word.
9. Write as you read. Take notes and talk back to the text. Explain in detail the concepts. Mark up the pages. Ask questions. Write possible test questions. Write down what interests or bores you. Speculate about why.
10. If you get stuck: think and write about where you got stuck. Contemplate why that particular place was difficult and how you might break through the block.
11. Record and explore your confusion. Confusion is important because it’s the first stage in understanding.
12. When the going gets difficult, and you don’t understand the reading, slow down and reread sections. Try to explain them to someone, or have someone else read the section and talk through it together.
13. Break long assignments into segments. Read 10 pages (and take notes) then do something else. Later, read the next 10 pages and so on.
14. Read prefaces and summaries to learn important details about the book. Look at the table of contents for information about the structure and movement of ideas. Use the index to look up specific names, places, ideas.

(Reading strategies by Dr. Kathleen King. Many of the above ideas are from a lecture by Dr. Lee Haugen, former Reading specialist at the ISU Academic Skills Center. https://www.ghc.edu/sites/default/files/StudentResources/documents/learn...)

Curious to learn more? Check out our Reading video, and hear what we have to say!

how to get the most out of what you read - The Idealist

Author: James Clear

Finishing a book is easy. Understanding it is much more difficult.

In recent years, I have been focused on cultivating healthy reading habits and learning to read more. But the key to success is not just consuming more pages, but reading better. For most people, the real goal in reading nonfiction, nonfiction, is to improve their lives by acquiring a new skill, understanding an important issue, or changing their view of the world. Reading books is important, but it's also important to be able to put what you read to good use.

That's why I'd like to share with you three book comprehension strategies that I use to make reading more productive

Strategies for understanding and benefiting from what you read

1. 1. Make it easy to search through the notes you take in the process of reading

Creating searchable notes is essential to easily returning to ideas. This increases the likelihood that you will apply what you read in real life. An idea is only useful when you can find it when needed. And today it is not necessary to keep everything in memory.

I keep all my book notes in Evernote . I strongly recommend this program to you because: 1. search is available in it 2. it is easy to use on multiple devices 3. you can create and save notes even if you are not connected to the Internet. I create notes in Evernote in three ways.

First, if I'm listening to an audiobook, I create a new note for it and record the information as I listen. I prefer to listen to audiobooks at 1.25x and hit pause whenever I want to record something. The faster listening process and the slower recording of information creates a balance, so I usually finish the book in about the same time as classical listening.

Second, if I'm reading a printed book, I follow the same algorithm with one difference. Taking notes while reading can be annoying because you have to put the book down every time. I like to place the book on a book stand, which makes it convenient to write long notes and leaves my hands free while reading.

Print books and audio books are great, but this system is really great for e-book reading. My third (and priority) reading method is e-books on the Kindle Paperwhite. I can easily highlight the passage I want to read on my Kindle—no typing required. After I'm done reading, I use a program called Clippings to import all my Kindle notes into Evernote.

These three approaches make it much easier for me to move my notes to Evernote, where they are searchable. Even if I don't remember where I read about a particular idea, I can just search my Evernote folder and quickly find the answer.

2. Integrate thoughts while reading

When you go to the library, you see that all the books there are divided into different categories: biographies, history, science, psychology. In the real world, of course, knowledge is not divided into clearly defined areas. Topics intersect and flow into each other. All knowledge is interconnected.

The most useful ideas are often found at the intersection of ideas

The most useful ideas are often found at the intersection of ideas. For this reason, I'm trying to imagine how the book I'm reading can relate to all the ideas that I already have in my head. Whenever possible, I try to integrate the ideas of what I read with the previous ones.

For example:

When I read the book The Signaling Brain by neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran, I found that one of his key ideas is related to an idea I learned from social work researcher Brené Brown.
While reviewing notes on Mark Manson's "The Fine Art of Not Screwing Up," I noted how Mark's idea of ​​"killing yourself" intersects with Paul Graham's essay on preserving our identity.
When I read George Leonard's Mastery, I found that while his entire book is about improvement, it also sheds light on the relationship between genetics and performance.
I have added each of these findings to my notes for the specific book. This process of integration and connection is critical not only to "holding" new ideas in your brain, but also to understanding the world as a whole.

Very often people use one book or article as the basis for a whole worldview, a system of beliefs. By forcing yourself to combine ideas, you will be able to understand that there can be no single view of the world. The complex connections between ideas are where the most beautiful knowledge is often found.

3. Summarize the book in one paragraph

As soon as I finish the book, I force myself to summarize the entire text I read in three sentences. This limitation is just a game, of course, but I find this exercise helpful because it forces me to revisit my notes and think about what was really important in the book.

How can I describe this book to a friend? What are its main ideas? If I wanted to implement only one idea from the book I read, what would it be?

In many cases I have found that I can usually get as much useful information from re-reading my summary paragraph as if I were re-reading the whole book again (there is a lot of water in modern non-fiction books).

I have published a lot of book summaries that have mostly this paragraph and notes on reading. If you are interested in how these reading strategies look in practice, then read the materials at the link above.

Happy reading!

Original: jamesclear.com

Strategies for reading and understanding texts

Content

1. What are the strategies for reading and understanding texts?
2. How do parents of children with dyslexia find support?
3. Are there reading programs in kindergartens?
4. At what age should a child learn to read?
5. How does reading affect the worldview?
6. Is the so-called “SMS language” a danger or an alternative?

Alexander Nikolaevich Kornev, Doctor of Psychology, Candidate of Medical Sciences, answers questions. A person who has been studying the meaning of texts for many years.

What are the strategies for reading and understanding texts?

Alexander Nikolaevich: Despite the fact that reading is an important and significant area in our lives, one cannot fail to say that this is a serious work that requires considerable effort. An adult becomes able to read, loves to read after he, while a child, has been learning this for quite a few years. We can say that reading is the art of penetrating the text. What we understand by reading is a synthesis of the information contained in the text and our knowledge. Each of us has accumulated our own life experience and, reading the text, we give rise to individual associations. These associations and depth of immersion in the text vary greatly from reader to reader. It is a mistake to think, as they often say in school, that the author laid down some content, and the task of the student is to learn how to extract it. In fact, everything is more complicated: in the process of reading, a kind of dialogue between the reader and the text occurs, which gives rise to the result .

In order to penetrate into the process of reading and understand it, a number of studies were carried out using the eye-tracking procedure - tracking eye movements during reading. Research has shown that adults have different strategies for scanning text.

Continuous fast reading

Continuous fast reading strategy, when the eye goes through all the lines, one by one. This strategy is not the most efficient, and it is also quite time consuming. The study was conducted on a sample of students and it was determined that 10-15% of them have only this strategy. And, accordingly, even when it is not needed, they still spend a lot of effort and time using it. The school has different priorities, so the use of a variety of reading strategies is not taught there.

Selective reading

Another strategy is selective reading, where the reader selectively reads what interests him and skips the rest. It is more economical than the previous one. It is often used by competent readers.

Diagonal reading

The extreme expression of selective reading is called "diagonal reading". Skimming through the text, the reader chooses the key points of the content of the text and synthesizes the whole. This strategy is the most economical, but requires special training. Although some master it on their own.

It is also impossible not to say that there are children who, having quite sufficient mental abilities, intellect, spending many years at school cannot learn the full skill of reading. For some children, this concerns mainly reading technique, for others, understanding also complements the problem.

Very many of these children are invisible, and their difficulties are invisible not only to teachers, but also to parents. This was shown by recent mass surveys, which were initiated by the Association of Parents of Children with Dyslexia. These children experience enormous hardships, but often do not receive help. Studying them is just one of our tasks. In Russia, this problem, unfortunately, has not been actively studied for many years. And now the Laboratory of Neurocognitive Technologies of the National Research Center and the Department of Logopathology of the St. Petersburg Pediatric Medical University in Russia are perhaps the most active in such studies.

Representatives of different sciences participate in these studies, because reading requires the use of resources of a very different nature: cognitive, physiological, linguistic. And psychologists, linguists, psychophysiologists and doctors are participating in the study of this issue. Interdisciplinarity for the development of this problematic is very important.

How do parents of dyslexic children find support?

Alexander Nikolaevich: This question is very topical and difficult. I would divide parents into 2 categories: the first, not very numerous, those who try to find help, do their best, literally devote themselves to helping the child. And, most importantly, they treat him sympathetically, condescendingly, psychologically support him.

And another category is parents, who, alas, underestimate the seriousness of this defect and the severity of the child's experiences. Often, they see the reason for the child's lagging behind in negligence, bully the child, forcibly force him to read a lot. As a result, they exacerbate the child's feelings, but do not help.

It turns out that actually far fewer parents seek help than needy children, and also because at the moment there is no network of centers where dyslexics would be helped effectively.

That's why we go forward ourselves. We go to schools, because often such children remain unidentified. And we are starting to move towards providing assistance, including with the help of a specially developed digital methodology hosted on the SLOGY.RU online platform. The creation of a digital methodology has made it possible to make a breakthrough in the provision of effective and affordable assistance. Because anywhere in Russia, anyone who has access to the Internet can get help, even if there is no speech therapist nearby.

Are there reading programs in kindergartens?

Alexander Nikolaevich: Of course, there is. There are several such recommended lists in preschool education programs. They contain works that are read to children. And they are sorted by age. But the fact is that reading aloud to children is an art. Being a reader does not mean just reading. And when it comes to children, this is especially important.

First, the reading must be expressive and artistic. Secondly, it should not be formal.

For example, this is what is called reading-dialogue, when the reading of a fairy tale is interspersed with a conversation, a dialogue with children. When they are invited to give their opinion. Not the one that is imposed on them, but their own impression that arose when listening to a fairy tale. Unfortunately, many institutions do not pay serious attention to this. This kind of reading, fairy tales, narratives allows, if it is done correctly, to infect the child with an interest in stories. First, an adult reads them, and then the child wants to do it himself. Of course, the family plays a huge role here.

Research has shown that the more interested parents are in reading, the more often they read, the more likely the child will develop an interest in reading. And it helps a lot if the child has difficulties. That is, a lot depends on the attitude of adults to the book, on the value position of reading.

Unfortunately, in our society, this is not as good as we would like. And adults began to read less often, and children are much less likely to reach for a book. In other words, this is a social problem, and not just a methodological one.

At what age should a child learn to read?

Alexander Nikolaevich: if we talk about the average figures that are known, then this age coincides with the beginning of schooling - 6.5-7 years. It takes about three years to master the technique of reading. And then the child feels more free in the space of the text and begins to enjoy, he develops interest. He reads of his own free will, and not because he was told at school. But there are many exceptions: there are children who, at the age of three or four, learned to read on their own. However, it is difficult to predict the likelihood of such an early reading acquisition. It is partly genetically determined, but the contribution of the environment is also great: at the end of 19- At the beginning of the 20th century there was a tradition of family reading, when adults read aloud to each other. The kids got into it too. Alas, this tradition has died out and is very rare now, and this infects the child - children have well-developed imitation, and if they see that adults are interested, they become interested too. And they are trying to get into this world. Therefore, the value position of reading, in my opinion, is very important.

How does reading affect the worldview?

Alexander Nikolaevich: When a person reads a book, he creates an imaginary world, forms his own "text image", reflects and draws his own conclusions. By thinking, he develops his brain. Figuratively speaking, it builds a kind of processor in the brain that can process texts and extract meanings. On the other hand, literary texts enrich the child's personality. Because in fiction we are given a colossal layer of experience that we are deprived of in real life. And it helps personal growth. This contribution is, of course, invaluable. I'm not talking about the benefits for the development of speech and the enrichment of vocabulary.

Is the so-called “SMS language” a danger or an alternative?

Alexander Nikolaevich: There are different points of view regarding the language of communication on the Internet and its integration into our everyday communication, speech, but they can rather be called opinions - this topic has not yet been seriously studied not only in Russia, but also in the world . In my opinion, cause and effect are often confused here. That is, it's not about the Internet, not about SMS, but about the language poverty of a considerable proportion of the population.

If a child or an adult has a need to communicate with a book, he will not replace it by flipping through pictures or something like that. But if there is no gravity, then the void can be filled with anything.

It is impossible not to mention the change in the culture and language of the oral, which, alas, is not growing in our country, but rather falling. Thus, a vicious circle is created - the poverty of the dictionary makes it difficult to understand the text, and little reading experience limits the growth of vocabulary. And we see this clearly and concretely. Children, reading texts of literature, especially classical ones, sometimes do not understand up to a third, or even half of the full meaning of words. A colleague will add to my words.

Ingrida Balciuniene: I am an associate professor at the Department of Logopathology at the Pediatric Medical University and at Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas, Lithuania). I study reading problems both there and here. I would like to draw attention to the frequent complaints from parents and teachers that the child does not want to read and does not like the book. He is happy to “sit in a laptop or phone”, but does not want to take up reading. Often in response to this complaint, advice is given: give him an e-book, download it to the tablet, and let the child read and develop. I don't think this is an option. Digitizing a book when the child is presented with the same material on a tablet screen will not help. Book speech is complex, it is characterized by long complex sentences, low-frequency and therefore unfamiliar words to the child. In order for the e-book to really help and the child to read with pleasure, additional technological solutions must be taken. For example, interactivity, intertextuality - so that the child can click on any word that he did not understand, and with this click he would open a definition, an explanation. Such active meaningful and meaningful reading can partially help solve this problem.

Alexander Nikolaevich: And I would add that the contribution of parents can be very large. Alas, in my experience, this happens quite rarely. Reading aloud to children usually ends at the age of 2-3 years and rarely, rarely reaches the beginning of schooling. And when a child has learned to read, parents for some reason think that since he can do it himself, now he no longer needs to read aloud. In fact, it is only after three or four years that the child will begin to understand in any depth what he is reading. This emphasizes the fact that reading aloud by an adult is also necessary for a child at school age. And in many countries this is cultivated: there is even an international society of narratologists, which specifically shares its experience and develops appropriate methods for reading and telling stories to children. You need to make time and spend it reading aloud to your child. Of course, every adult has his own life and his own troubles, but this contribution can hardly be overestimated, because it is a contribution to the formation of the child's personality.

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